2008 Presidential Election: Who are you voting for?

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

well since McCain's campaign has started on Obama's associations this week

Let me give you 3 names to remember:

Charlie Black,whose lobbying firm represented human rights abusers in the Philippines and Nigeria...AND MCCAIN CHIEF ADVISOR?

Rick Davis a Republican strategist, and co-owners of Davis Manafort Inc., a public relations firm that worked for a Ukrainian political party backed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin..and involved with Freddie Mac, also associated with Oleg Deripaska an organized crime figure who has been denied entry in the US

who is also tied to......

Paul Manafort whose lobby group has taken in millions of dollars in hefty fees from the torturers, human rights abusers, and tyrants they called clients in Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines.


and let's throw Ted Stevens and John Abramoff in for good measure

I think McCain will take that trade-off. The people you can associate him with are typical associations that you could make to anyone who has been in Washington for a long time. The problem Obama will run into with his associations are that they aren't your typical "damn corrupt Washington" ties, they are non-mainstream radical figures which have the potential to scare some people away from Obama. You play it up as "Wait, maybe he isn't the kind of change we've been waiting for after all, I would never hang out with those nutjobs and I can't imagine anyone who would."

McCain also has the benefit of a degree of seperation. He works with people who work with people who might not be too popular. Obama is friends with and works directly with the nutjobs in his case.

Look at it this way, no matter how many unpopular things McCain advisers have done, none of them put together a group to bomb the Capitol building, got on stage and screamed about conspiracies and "God Damn America!" or helped pay for his house next door to theirs with embezzled funds from deals that McCain helped him get. If Obama legitamizes this campaign tactic by responding in kind he's making a mistake because his connections at least sound worse.