BARACK QUIETLY KNOCKS IT OUT OF THE PARK
MCCAIN IS DOWN FOR THE COUNT AND
THE RACE IS COMING DOWN THE HOME STRETCH
It took three sports metaphors to describe what happened last evening in the third and final debate between Obama and McCain. Unfortunately, as we have discovered in recent weeks, there are two very different John McCain’s and last night “the bad John McCain” showed up for the debate. He was caustic, sarcastic, manipulated the facts about Obama personally and Obama’s plans for his presidency and in general was a disagreeable old fogey who is out of touch with the American people’s feelings, their present economic condition and their anxieties over jobs, health insurance, and retirement.
The polls that followed the debate found 80% of the spectators viewing McCain as negative while 7% saw him as positive. With numbers like that even most of the Republican viewers thought he spent too much knocking his opponent and not enough time explaining his plan.
There were times when I wanted to reach through the television and slap his condescending, arrogant, and dismissive face. He made remarks that were totally out of bounds. For example, he remarked that Obama’s tax plan was a prescription for “class warfare.” He accused Obama of never traveling south of the border to find out for himself whether trade agreements with Columbia and Peru were properly structured for the mutual benefit of both the U. S. and the trading partner. He falsely stipulated that with Obama’s health insurance program small businessmen would be fined if they did not provide health insurance for their employees and failed to mention that the Obama would provide assistance for those businesses that cannot afford employee insurance. He continued to misinterpret his health insurance program with its $5,000 payment from the government as superior to Obama’s when even the National Chamber of Commerce declares that the McCain plan could wipe out our health care system for many.
However, I do believe that his attitude was so hostile that he alienated many who were looking for a straight forward discussion of the issues and were turned off by his continuous denigration of Obama.
On the other hand, Obama was calm, cautious and extremely clear in his delineation of his program all the way from his health insurance proposals to his tax plans.
There is not doubt that Obama won this debate going away. Even Fox News, the infamous right wing cable news channel’s viewers saw Obama as the winner.
Bar something extraordinary—some event not anticipated, some terrorist attack, some political catastrophe, Obama will be the next president of the United States. And I believe that his election will be one of the most nation changing events of our entire history.
The pride of this nation will skyrocket on January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama is sworn in as President of the United States.
Our image in the world which has been so badly tarnished by the Bush Administration will be revitalized by this brilliant, eloquent and humble bi-racial man and an administration which will move the country back to its basic values, back to its constitutional form of government and out of the hands of the military industrial complex which has been in control for 20 out of the last 28 years with the exception of eight years under Clinton.
The racism that still plagues thousands of our number will be eradicated as those who have never really known a man of another color become acquainted and see for themselves just how capable, how honorable, how intelligent and how ingenious this man is.
I heard a gentleman say during a television interview recently that when Obama becomes the Commander-in-Chief of America, when compared to the heads of states of all other countries, will look like Einstein. He is just that bright.
I must admit that during the George W. Bush years, I was embarrassed by the man, his style of governance, his cowboy style of dealing with the other nations of the world, and his violation of some of this nation’s most precious constitutional rights. He is not intelligent. He is not creative. He is brash, boorish, and by far the most failed president this nation has seen in decades.
Bush stole the White House by engineering the final vote count in Florida in 2000, rigged the election by winning Ohio when, in deed, it is believed he lost that state in 2004; subsequently he has robbed us of the pride in our leaders, pride in our nation’s conduct in the global arena, and most importantly of all, he robbed us of the financial wherewithal to accomplish great, good and extremely urgent needs at home by frittering away billions of dollars of our precious tax payer money in a totally unnecessary war in Iraq and massive tax cut for the rich.
The vast majority of the American people want to walk away from this Bush Administration as quickly as they can and to forget the past eight years of failure in international relations, in war, in fiscal responsibility and nearly every dimension of governing. The latest polls reveal that 88% of the people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction while only 7% believe the country is on the right track. I do not know who those 7% of our population are, and frankly I do not want to know. They are a sad bunch of people
Last night, October 15, 2008, Barack Obama clearly and definitely won this debate. He remained calm, cool, cogent in his answers and likeable in his persona.
McCain, on the other hand, as Rahm Emanuel (R-IL) called him on MSNBC’S The Keith Olberman Show was “an angry old man in slippers” who plainly was condescending toward Obama. His campaign has gone personal and perilously negative without any mention of policy or programs that address the serious concerns facing the American people that he would pursue as president.
If the nation is lucky enough to elect Barack Obama as our next president, McCain has nobody to blame, but his own bombastic self who is so insecure he was threatened by one of the brightest men ever to seek office in this country since Thomas Jefferson.
11:54:13 AM 
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