The 2008 presidential field at-a-glance
 

As todays papers show, the fields on both sizes are filling up.
So, in order to be helpful, just thought this thread should start up.

From the Washington Post-Their coverage section:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2...al-candidates/

Washington Post Politics main page:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/politics/

White House 2008 candidate rankings
Rating the presidential candidates in light of recent conditions
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16711490/

MSNBC's Politics main page:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

CNN's Politics main page:
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/

Fox's Politics main page:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/index.html

Reuters Politics main page:
http://www.reuters.com/news/politics


Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage point of the actual outcome.

Some views of the situation from the Editorial/Op-Ed pages:
http://cagle.com/news/2008WhosRunning/

Perhaps it is time to give this a bump up.

Yes, many links.
But the different sites just about cover all the "angles";)

Pick and choose your education.:)

Choose you Candidate quiz
 

Here is a rather interesting link from the Washington Post site.
Lets you "vote" or pick on position statements on about 25 major
issues.
At the end, you find out whose position you favor.
Takes about 20 minutes or so.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...candidatequiz/

I did it rather quickly and was rather surprised at the result.

I enjoyed taking the quiz, but it really just seems to test your preference in rhetoric. Often answers are virtually identical, but choosing one expression comes out as a preference for a candidate when there was really no substantial difference among the choices.

Which version of Yes, I think Roe vs. Wade should be overturned in the Republican quiz or No, I wouldn't privatize social security in the Democratic quiz really made your candidate stand out?

Not sure if you did it, but it took me a question or two to realized that you can click to see entire answer.:o

I did, but there's still for most of the questions not a very meaningful difference in most of the answers. It comes down to what flavor you like your rhetoric more than much of a philosophical or substantive difference, or so many seemed to me at least.

A great part of what I will be trying to evaluate when I actually vote will be which of the candidates is actually most likely to follow through on these ideas if elected, both in intention and ability. (I think at least 50% of what most of them are saying is a reflection not of what they think needs to be done but what they think we want to hear.)

The likelihood of actually getting the government I want a lot more important to me than the order of their top three priorities if elected, especially when for almost all of them two of the three priorities are the same.

Good thoughts.
I agree.

I just did the WaPo quiz and got the candidate I'm supporting, so that worked out well for me. ;) The thing was designed really poorly though - it should have just shown you the full answer from the beginning.

I totally agree! I just finished the democratic version and they all said the same thing, just ina different way. I ended up just picking the answers that I thought sounded best.

I loved that.

I would recommend checking out Ron Paul and Bill Richardson. This country needs a huge change economically or we could be looking at a recession in 5-7 years. The fed can't lower interest rates forever. Did you know that our country can't even pay the INTEREST on our current deficit? We produce nothing in this country anymore!

Earlier this year The Onion reported that after losing for so many years the American Public is sitting out this election.

Michigan Democratic Primary
 

I am so mad about the whole Michigan primary debacle but I don't know if the rest of the country knows what's going on here. Bottom line, we aren't really having a primary. Here's the deal:

Under Democratic National Committee rules, only Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina are allowed to hold primaries before February 5.

Michigan Democrats moved their state's primary date to January in an effort to increase the state's influence in the nominee selection process, arguing Iowa and New Hampshire unfairly dominate the process.

Obama, Biden, Edwards, and Richardson took themselves off the ballot since it was an "illegal" primary. Clinton and Dodd are still on the ballot, but Dodd has dropped out of the race after last night's Iowa caucus.

On our ballot will be Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel (who???). We can also vote "Uncommitted" or we can Write In. However, write ins for the candidates who dropped off the ballot WILL NOT COUNT.

Additionally, since the Michigan Democratic Party did not follow the Democratic National Party guidelines, the DNP has voted to exclude our delegates from the Convention anyway.

Why even bother???? Most are saying to just go and vote Uncommitted if you don't want to vote for Clinton. The MDP needs some new leadership.. ugh!

I'm LOL at your Gravel comment! A politico friend of mine is a great friend of Mike Gravel (pronounced grah-VELL), and he asked me about a year ago to see if anyone had heard of Sen. Gravel on any and all message boards/blogs I'm on (here's the GC question). Former Sen. Gravel was from Alaska, and you can read about him at Gravel 2008, and he also has blogs on myspace, facebook, YouTube, etc.

Again, I did this for a friend, not because I'm involved in any way with his campaign.

BTW, that really stinks that Michigan is being treated like the redheaded stepchild of the DNC. I've been saying for years that some of the bigger states should be more involved in the early primaries. I heard that Romney poured $10 million into Iowa alone!

Wasn't Florida getting threatened with the same fate?

A number of states are being "punished" by the democrats and republicans. According to the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7049207.stm

"The Democratic Party is punishing Michigan and Florida by refusing to accept their delegates at the national convention. So neither state's Democratic primary will count. (The main Democratic candidates have said they will not campaign in either state.)

The Republican Party is penalising Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wyoming, by reducing their quota of delegates by half."

Gotta love the BBC.

Very interesting.

Poor Florida and their hanging chads -- now this.

See, and I don't necessarily blame the DNC either. Why MUST we have such an early primary? It's our fault that Iowa and NH had to move theirs so far forward too. I think it's ridiculous that we choose our candidates so far in advance of the conventions. It sounded like it was good in the "olden days" when you actually found out who the candidate was going to be DURING the convention. Now it's a big deal if they wait til then to announce the VP candidate.

I like the idea of a rotating primary system where it's set up so that different states get to be earlier each election. (And Iowa/NH/SC can still go first if that's oh so necessary, I've seen models that do both) Then we could all stop playing the "I'm moving MINE a day earlier" "No ME" "No ME!" game.

I would like to see the primary system go even one step beyond that.
Set up rotating groups of sectional/regional areas.
Would save money and increase the time candidates are in a given area.
This would never happen.

Yes, even though it's utopian, it's a good start. I'd like to add having 5 Super Tuesdays of 10 states each to your model - held every other week.

Also utopian is having ONE six-year presidency, instead of a four-year term, defined by running for reelection for two of those years - but I'm all for it.

This is how we let democracy work in our own country, and we think we're in a position to put it in place in OTHER countries??!?

I am getting kinda mad that because our state legislature passed law when Florida's primary should be, the parties are punishing us? Why would they cut out the voice of the people??? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and there are talks that Conventions will change their minds, but who knows! I do know this.....after the whole affair in 2000, I was in high school, and it was all that was ever discussed it seems; You would think more attention would be paid to FL instead of diminishing it. We are still a pretty big swing vote and have 27 electoral college votes....2 more than in 2000.

My private fantasy: that at least two people from Greek Chat run for Delegate to their party's Convention - preferably one from each party. I'd love to hear the "insiders' reports"!

Seriously, how do you become a delegate?

My best friend made it all the way to our state convention as a delegate in 2004, and though she totally volunteered to do it, she said it was VERY boring. A lot of speeches, rules and voting and it took several hours. She said she'd never do it again.

I'd start out by calling your county's Democratic or Republican Committee - they'll tell you exactly what you need to do. I was just able to vote when I ran, and I'm not sure how it works now. I know that I had to get a petition signed by 250 people, and filed with the County Elections Department. Then you run on the primary ballot. At that time, if a woman got the most votes (me), then the man with the most amount of votes got the next delegate position, then the woman with the second-most number of votes, then the man with the second-most number of votes, etc. I don't know if it's still done that way or not. We had a meeting of about 10 delegations or basically 4-5 congressional districts, then a state one, then one in DC. Being so young, I had no big say in anything in those meetings, but when we finally got to the Convention, suddenly there were a lot of news crews asking my opinion about various topics, as I supposedly represented "the youth vote".

As for boring, there are also alternate delegates and you can run as an alternate. If you think the topics at a given time aren't your thing, you can always have an alternate take your place, while you do something else.

Yep, because the national party leadership want to punish the party leadership for a state, they basically punish and somewhat disenfranchise any regular party members in that state, and yet, the party members or anyone willing to vote in the primary and not have his or her primary or caucus vote fully count at the convention is still supposed to stay loyal enough to vote for the party's candidate in the general elections. Why does that seem to make sense to the party leadership?

If it had happened in my state, I think I'd very much feel like a complete free agent in the general election. (Actually, if Huckabee is the nominee, I would anyway.)

And why do we privilege Iowa and New Hampshire, anyway? If the parties' position was that we'd have all the primaries on the same day, that'd be one thing, but why are some states just expected to sit back to see if their candidates appeal well enough in the early states to even stay in the race until you can vote for them in your states primary? )

What the parties will probably realize sometime in the next decade is that punishing members of a party organization does nothing but disenfranchise those who are registered to that party but do not consider themselves members of the party organization.

The rank-and-file, unfortunately, usually takes a long time to figure these things out, .

Does anyone know when/where Florida's primaries are gonna be?

WHERE:confused::confused::confused:?
If you mean where the polling locations are, normally they are where they are anytime there is an election.
Call your local election board HQ for details.

WHOOPS! No sleep makes for stupid questions ;-)

Iowa and New Hampshire have been historically the first for voting on candidates.

But when a National party disenfranchises total states, that is shear ignorance.:mad:

How come some are not invited to the debates?

Wow, talk about a deck stacking gone wrong!

Florida's primary is going to be held Tuesday, January 29th. Where you vote is determined by your county elections office. I would call them or even use their website to look up your voting place and make sure you are registered and all that. I believe the deadline may have just passed to register for this election. If you have any more county specific questions, please feel free to Pm' me.

As for candidates, I am a Huckabee fan. I like McCain, but it bothers me that on his website, he does not list education as a major issue. I understand that taking care of foreign policy is important, but so is the education of our youth!! Can you tell that my degree is in education? lol!

Is anybody out there a Ron Paul supporter? At this point, I am kinda convinced they are all whack jobs. No offense to anyone, but they said in one blog that Glenn Beck is the devil???

Who is "they"?

Do "they" speak for all Ron Paul supporters?

-- I agree with you, I think education is probably the defining civil rights issue of our time.

Oh boy do I agree!

Cannot really see any of the so called in crowd and front runners be The It Candidate.

Ron Paul has some off the wall ideas, but also some very good ideas.

Fred Thompson is starting to come on and getting more comforatable with interviews.

But if neither are included in some of the major debates, how are we to know?:rolleyes:

I'm a Ron Paul supporter, and not a "whack job". I guess it is in the other candidates' best interest to portray us as nutty, but I know many reasonable, intelligent people who are supporting Ron Paul.

Glenn Beck the devil? Naw, that's Hillary. KIDDING - I'm KIDDING.