Biden / Palin VP Debate, Oct 2nd @ 9PM EST

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by nittanyalum

Ah, now I see why our GOP friends are in a frenzy, I've been buried for a couple of days and have only caught tidbits of news here and there, am just catching up today -- just stopped by here for the first time in a while: Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Check out FiveThirtyEight.com. Even more reason to be worried there.

Originally Posted by Kevin

I think we're both thinking of influence in different terms. Perhaps that's my fault for imprecise wording?

Well, surely you're not suggesting it's my fault?!

But I see what you're saying.

As for what Nelson said, politicians say the craziest things and for the craziest reasons. An Illinois Republican state elected official saying very nice things about the probable future president which might substantially improve his standing in the eyes of the doubting public might possibly have motives beyond giving the public a truthful account about how everyone feels about former domestic terrorists.

Politics does indeed make for strange bed-fellows. (But she's a former State Senator, not a current one. FWIW)

Still, though, her point still stands. So far as I can tell, pretty much everyone who dealt with Ayers (who is a professor at U of Illinois-Chicago -- I know, insert joke here), whether Democrat or Republican, treated his WU activities as part of the past and did not view them as impediments to dealing with him now. I can't help but take that into account when the charge is made now that Obama should have had nothing to do with him.

As I said, politics makes for strange bed-fellows.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Still, though, her point still stands.

And you don't think it's mitigated at all by the fact that she could stand to gain quite a bit by being the 'Republican who is not standing upon partisanship, but telling the truth because it's what's best for our country!'?

When listening to politicians who are saying unlikely things, a good rule of thumb is to assume that whatever the most cynical person could come up with as a motive for the politician to say what she said is probably true.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

And you don't think it's mitigated at all by the fact that she could stand to gain quite a bit by being the 'Republican who is not standing upon partisanship, but telling the truth because it's what's best for our country!'?

When listening to politicians who are saying unlikely things, a good rule of thumb is to assume that whatever the most cynical person could come up with as a motive for the politician to say what she said is probably true.

Maybe, but

• when that politician is saying that pretty much nobody, Republican or Democrat ever expressed a problem with working with Ayers before this year's campaign, and

• when such a statement can be easily proven untrue if it is indeed untrue, and

• when nobody seems to be disputing that claim, and what record I can find, at least, doesn't dispute it, and

• when it is undisputable that it didn't bother the Annenberg people (hardly a hot-bed of liberalism, and this was long before Obama as president looked like a possibility), and

• it's undisputable that Ayers' past didn't keep him from becoming a distinguished professor of education at a major university (their graduate program in education was ranked 42 in the country by USN&WR in 2007),

then an equally good if not better rule of thumb might be to consider the possibility that what she's saying is, in fact, true.