The thing that excites me more than anything though is that our opinion across the world has just been dramatically improved.  The best story I’ve heard so far came from the morning show on KFAN here in Minneapolis.  If you do not listen to the show, their producer Chris Hockey is currently in France to run a marathon.  He called in this morning and told a story about his morning.  He said he got into his cab and the first thing the cabbie, who couldn’t speak English, said to him is “Go Obama.”  It’s wonderful to think others around the world think we made the right choice.

To John McCain’s supporters, you fought a good fight, and I understand you are disappointed.  But if you truly love this country you need to put down any anger you may have and stand with your country behind your new President.  We all need to work together to fix things.

To John McCain, you would have won this presidency had the Maverick on stage for your concession speech ran.  I’m glad you are back and am thankful you are going back to the Senate.  We need someone with your experience and leadership to work with President Obama to rebuild this country. Disagree with him whenever you can, it’s the debate between our leaders that will lead us back to greatness.

To Sarah Palin and her supporters.  I may not agree with you that Ms. Palin should have been Vice President, and I hope I’m wrong about who will get the blame for yesterday’s loss.  I may not want Sarah Palin in a high office in this country, but I do think she can get out and do good things for us if she wants to.

I said on Twitter last night that I was proud to be an American last night.  I got some responses that said they were always proud of America and their pride didn’t change based on elections.  I can’t say the same.  This country has made so much progress over the last 50 years.  I never thought I would see a black president, let along one with the name Barack Obama.  Race relations in this country will never be perfect, but I hope that my children will grow up and not think about the color of a persons skin.   When I say that I’m not talking about not judging based on the color of someone’s skin, but truly not noticing color at all.

We will never know if we made the best choice yesterday.   But I don’t think we made a wrong choice.  Watching our President-Elect speak in front of thousands of people in Grant Park was awesome.  Obama is an incredibly gifted speaker, but his speech wasn’t just about speaking style.  He knows and admits that nothing has changed yet, but he thinks that he can change things for the better.  He didn’t try to tell the American people that things will be better on January 20th, 2009.  He warned us that hard work is ahead and he will try to lead us through it the best he can.  It’s for that reason that I am confident that American did make the best choice last night and go to work today knowing that things will get better.

It is true that until recently, Bush’s tax plans seemed to be working.  Companies were profitable and other than post 9/11 the markets were growing.  This did not continue though, and for the last two or three years, economic indicators showed that the economy was slowing down.  

The fact that the economy slowed down is not an argument against Bush and McCain’s tax plan.  The argument is the economic stimulus plan that both Republicans and Democrats supported in an attempt to stop the slowdown. The economic stimulus plan gave the middle class extra income.  The hope was this extra income would go towards the purchase of goods and services in an attempt to jump-start the economy.  This is counter to the trickle down tax policies of Bush’s eight years.  If trickle down economics worked, the solution to the economic slowdown would have been to send the stimulus package to large companies so they could pay their employees more, or show more profit on their balance sheet.  One could argue that the reason this was not proposed is it sounds insane.  I say that Bush’s argument for trickle down economics sounded just as insane.  

Looking at the two presidential candidate’s tax plans in this context may not be 100% correct, but it is interesting.  In this context, Obama’s plan acts like an economic stimulus plan for anyone making less than $200,000.  Granted he will repeal Bush’s tax cuts, which will hurt some upper income tax payers.  This is not a problem if you believe as I do that everyone is better off if everyone who makes less money than them makes more money.  Why do I think this?  It is simple, for business to thrive it needs customers.  For people to be customers they need money to spend on goods and services.  If you run a business, chances are you can afford your product.  If everyone who bringing home less income than you has more disposable income, you have more potential customers.  More customers mean more opportunities to bring home a profit, which will trickle up to those hurt by Obama’s tax policies. 

Obama’s tax plan acts like an economic stimulus plan.  It gives the middle class extra take home income to the middle class that they can use to purchase goods and services.  If a $600 per person economic stimulus package is good for the economy, how can anyone say that Obama’s tax plan is going to kill job creation.  If that was the case then conservatives should have fought tooth and nail to keep the economic stimulus package from going through.

• Obama seemed to come off as much more presidential.  He was calm, thoughtful, while McCain seemed to rush into the answers he knew and stumbled through those he wasn’t 100% sure of.
• McCain didn’t seem nearly as comfortable in the town hall meeting as I expected.  On the other hand, I think he may have gained from Obama’s inability to stop talking.  The Obama supports on twitter were even getting annoyed with it.
• McCain’s new home plan sounds very similar to something Biden said in the VP debate that I very strongly disagree with.  Here is part of the quote from McCain. Source

Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

• And here is Biden during the VP debate. Source

Number two, with regard to bankruptcy now, Gwen, what we should be doing now — and Barack Obama and I support it — we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to re-adjust not just the interest rate you’re paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe, the principal that you owe.

• I am in agreement that we should allow renegotiation of interest rates.  This would help everyone by allowing the banks to make some money on the loan instead of nothing when the home goes into foreclosure.  I completely disagree with the idea of changing the principle owed on a loan.  I would write more but this feels like a post itself.
• Anyone who pays attention to body language can tell that McCain has very little respect for Obama.  Obama doesn’t appear to greatly respect McCain either, but it doesn’t seem as though Obama considers McCain unworthy of his respect.
• Did I mention that Obama really needs to learn to stop talking once in a while.
• Obama gave two answers I really liked.  He stated that health care should be a right which I am in 100% agreement of.  He also commented that Americans are going to have to make sacrifices to get through the current crisis.   I was not alive during the Korean war or Vietnam and haven’t spent much time reading about that time period, but I know during both World Wars Americans went without a lot of things.  We are fighting two wars right now, maybe it’s time us  non-military families sacrificed something other than being able to drive 200 miles for $20.
• Tom Brokaw came across as a high school English teacher.  Yes, the candidates agreed to the rules, but I would have rather seen both of them go at each other for the entire 90 minutes on one issue then hear Brokaw cry when they didn’t listen to him.

I’m not going to spend hours tearing the debate apart, you can find that all over the web.  These are just a few things that I either thought about or noticed last night.  For a running tally of my thoughts, please visit my Twitter page.  I didn’t tweet a ton during the debate, but one tweet stood out to me.  I said Brokaw impressed me, he did at the time, but as I thought about it more I changed my opinion.

Please remember everything you read here are my opinions.  Please find out the facts before you make your decision on how to vote November 4th.  This election is too important to be uninformed.

Mr. McCain had already met with House Republicans to hear their concerns. He later said on ABC that he had known going into the White House that “there never was a deal,” but he kept that sentiment to himself.

McCain knew but didn’t say anything, and people are really going to vote for him.  This man has absolutly no leadership capabilities, we can’t afford to have him in the White House.   Whether the republicans are right about this plan or not I really don’t care at this point, but why waste everyone’s time.  McCain should have stood up and said, “wait, this isn’t going to work so let’s sit back down and keep working on this thing.”  Instead he walked into the meeting which appeared to many participants to be the final step before voting, and apparently stood idely by as the negotiations imploded.  I wouldn’t let this man run a 2 star diner, let alone the U.S. Government.

Their first statement is  the surge in troops worked.  This isn’t an easy thing to answer.  Defining “worked” is like trying to define “happy”, there are just too many variables.  Did the violence in Iraq go down once the surge began, yes is the obvious answer.  And I will assume that is the definition of “worked” in this case.

Can you really state that the entire decrease in violence was caused by our troops?  And that we wouldn’t have reached the current levels of violence without it?  For the argument in questions to work you have to be able to answer those questions.  To be honest though we could say that the Sunni Awakening is responsible.  I tend to come down on the side of our troops and state that they were a big part of the decrease in violence.  Obama has already stated that he agrees the troop surge was successful.  And the fact violence is down it’s easy to see.  The logic of the McCain camp fails though when they say he was wrong to oppose the surge because violence is now down.  To make that conclusion, they need to successfully state that without the surge, violence would not have decreased.  That is a failed assumption.  The only way to prove this is to be able to go back in time, not implement the surge and see the results.  If violence remained at the same levels or accelerated Obama would be proven wrong.  And inversely, if violence decrease Obama would be correct.

Unfortunately this is impossible.  It may be that without the surge the Sunni Awakening along with the existing US troop presence would have decreased the violence.  You could argue that it would have taken longer, but you could also argue that there would have been less US troop casualties without the surge.  So that is a double edged sword.

To make a sports comparison, the logic that Obama’s detractors are using is the same as stating that without that mid-season trade, a sport team would not have made the playoffs or won the championship.  Everyone can see that the trade was successful, but to state that without the trade they would be out of the playoffs is impossible.

Another comparison would be stating that without a book being chosen by Oprah for her book club the book wouldn’t be successful.  Once again,  Oprah choosing the book makes it a best seller, but who can say that without Oprah selecting it, that it wouldn’t have become a best seller on it’s merits alone.

Anyone who is willing to look at the logic can see stating Obama was wrong about the Surge is a fallacy.  Arguing that the supports of the surge were also wrong is illogical by the same token.  Obama hasn’t done this though, he has admitted that the surge worked, but to admit that he was initially wrong would be to state that without the surge we wouldn’t have seen progress, and you can’t prove that without a flux capacitor.

]]> http://connermccall.com/20080905/the-logic-of-the-surge/feed/ 0 http://connermccall.com/20080811/the-enthusiasm-gap-what-bumper-stickers-may-tell-us/ http://connermccall.com/20080811/the-enthusiasm-gap-what-bumper-stickers-may-tell-us/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:23:50 +0000 Conner http://connermccall.com/?p=185 I have noticed a few things while driving around the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, home of the 2008 Republican National Convention.  There do not appear to be any signs of support for the Republican candidate.  I think this is an indicator of a document trend, the “enthusiasm gap” between Barack Obama and John McCain.  Though the majority of polls have been showing Obama with a modest 5 point lead, msnbc reports:

But the most revealing numbers in the survey were the ones measuring voter enthusiasm: 61% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in this year’s election, while just 35% of Republicans said that.

What does that have to do with bumper stickers?  Well, my job sends me all over the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. This was the route that I drove one day last week, driving over 100 miles.

View Larger Map
About 2 weeks ago I happened to notice an Obama ’08 bumper sticker.  For some reason it struck me and I decided to look for a bumper sticker for McCain.  I didn’t see any that day, but I vowed to start paying attention to bumper stickers on the highway.  To this date I have not seen a single bumper sticker supporting McCain.  On the other hand, since I started keeping track, I have noticed eight Obama bumper stickers.  This isn’t a significant statistic, as it’s one person’s observation, but I thought it was interesting.  In addition, I also have seen yard signs supporting Obama.  I haven’t kept track but I would guess I’ve seen five or more signs representing Obama.  Again I have yet to see a sign supporting McCain in a single yard.

Now many factors could come into play here.  I will state that I am an Obama supporter, so my bias could play some factor.  It could also be that McCain’s supports don’t want to stick anything on their cars, or feel that bumper stickers are a poor way to support their candidate.  In fact that was my thought at first, but then I started noticing several Bush/Cheney ’04 stickers.  Well to me that seemed to indicate that my initial thoughts were probably not the best explanation.  The more I think about it, the enthusiasm gap seems to be the most likely explanation.  It seems that Obama’s supports are willing to take the time to put a bumper sticker on, while McCain’s supporters don’t.

Here is another interesting indicator of enthusiasm.  Using Google trends, I compared the search volume of obama, mccain, barack obama, and john mccain.  These results were searches which originated in Minnesota and took place within the last 12 months.

Here are the results.

As you can see, obama has over three times the search volume of mccain, and full names yield a a similiar search disparity.   The odd thing I found in the results is that the spikes in search volume for obama correspond to the primaries.  Obama’s overseas trip results in no obvious increase in search volume.

The comparison seems to show that people who search using Google appear much more interested in Obama then McCain.  This could be the result of Obama being the lesser known of the two candidates.  It could also be that McCain supporters use bookmarks or just type in the websites they wish to go to, where Obama supports use google as their bookmarks.

Though neither of these observations can be taken as scientific, they are in some ways telling.  I think coupled with the enthusiasm gap that is evident from reliable polling numbers, it’s an interesting trend.  I did see one other Republican bumper sticker recently.  It might not mean a whole lot, but it may sum up many peoples feelings on the GOP as of late, and it was kind of humerous.