Anyone care to desconstruct this Talk Left bullshit?
Who’s really picking our Democratic nominee? If it’s the Democratic youth or African American voters, I’m okay with that. That’s fair. If it’s Republicans, I’m not. We’ll get trounced in November. Without reliable stats to show Obama’s support is from those who will [vote] for the Democrat in November, I’d say the best way to ensure Republicans stay out of our race and don’t steal another election from us is for Dems to vote for Hillary to be the nominee.
I don’t know why I care what Talk Left says. I think it is just pride in the artform of blogging. I can’t stand to see analysis so bad that it is indiscernible from straight-up undisclosed shilling. Talk Left is an insult to the genre of left-wing political blogging. It’s so easy to debunk their crap that it is beneath most people to even bother.
And it’s impossible that they can just shrug off their performance in the primary and get back on board for the general. They have so little credibility…who would want them as an ally?
Disappointed.
Do not expect the Talk Left people will support an Obama candidacy in GE campaign. Just observe the criticisms to come that he can do no good things.
I’m glad you brought this up.
I been wondering if I can really trust people again who have been willing to sink so low and become so divisive.
I started posting heavily at TalkLeft back around 2006 regarding the Duke lacrosse case. At first the case itself was interesting. After awhile, the sniping in the face of the facts was interesting.
When that case wound down I drifted away and so was surprised to find how deeply and unthinkingly pro-Clinton most posters there were. And how weirdly anti-Obama they were.
It is pretty obvious that Clinton had an advantage early because Obama wasn’t known. But as the campaign has progressed it’s getting clear that Clinton’s window is closing.
I wouldn’t go there for any fair analysis, but if you want to see what the latest rumor or excuse is in the Clinton camp, it’s the place to go.
I’d read that quite differently. They’re not asking if Obama’s being set up to fail by Republicans. They’re saying “The only real Democrats are those that vote for Hillary.” Young people and African-Americans aren’t “real” Democrats – they’re either too young or too black.
.
Animal Farm: “All are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I couldn’t read them all, but read enough TalkLeft comments & finally got the Stumble Strategy: one Obama stumble is supposed to override numerous Clinton stumbles, fumbles & grumbles.
I wanted to say that I don’t why you care either and tell you that you just shouldn’t bother reading it. But I do understand, partly.
But let me be clear. I disagree on the “they” part. Armando can still produce true analyses when he wants to. I don’t always agree with him and, if Jeralyn didn’t exist or at least it wasn’t her blog, I’d take the time to tell him when I did or didn’t agree with him. But Jeralyn exists and controls the place, so I rarely go there. I’ve even taken it off of my RSS feed.
Someday, I hope, she’ll go back to writing exclusively about legalizing marijuana and letting criminals back out on street at the earliest possible date, so that I’ll once again be able ignore her like I always did. But until then, it’s not worth the effort of trying to get past her writing to get to something else.
While, I’m for the legalization of marijuana, that last section is actually how I found out about TalkLeft in the first place. Two of my cousins who are criminal lawyers and knew that I blogged sent me the link with, “Is this lady for real?”
I don’t disagree with some of her criminal law blogging and I found her viewpoint of the Libby trial from a criminal defense point of view to be very interesting.
But she’s not a political analyst. And the clearest evidence that she’s not a political analyst and shouldn’t be taken seriously is the fact that Armando never calls her on any of her analyses. Armando was loyal to kos during his years at dKos but he often called him on his political analyses. Armando never calls Jeralyn on hers. Never.
Yet another reason why I don’t respect Jeralyn. She should want that. She should encourage it. It would make her blog better. But she doesn’t. Hell, any time Armando writes anything that could even vaguely be thought pro-Obama or (even more rarely) anti-Hillary – she tolerates that he puts “speaking only for me” on it. I’m not going to go so far as to say that she requires it, she probably doesn’t. But the fact that she feels that is appropriate? Speaks volumes about her.
On the one hand I don’t take her seriously. On the other hand I find her political blogging so awful that I don’t want to support her blog by commenting there or giving it a lot of page hits. So I don’t.
The idea that BooMan even feels a need to debunk anything she writes? I find laughable.
I think it’s good that liberals and lefties get constant reminders that there are plenty of people on this side of the fence that can’t think worth a damn, either. What the quote brings most to mind is trying to parse Creationism or Huckabee’s tax plan. Exactly the same quality of thought, seems it me. Which opens up all kinds of cans of political and philosophical worms.
if he ever had it! All he says in response to fact based criticism of his posts is “that’s your opinion” and “don’t hijack the post”. Same for Jeralyn.
in the comments. Not the kind of dispute that Armando excels at. And she has a very narrow definition of on-topic.
Being a commenter there, you have to stick to her rules. It’s like being in kindergarden. Or prison.
Armando is totally wasted there, especially during an election season. But … her blog, her rules.
I’ve seen that. It’s heavily censored. Entire threads of “off topic” conversation have been wiped out. Sometimes she’ll leave the comment – usually pro-Clinton – that sparked the digression (in her view) up though.
No one should be afraid of disagreement. Attorney’s should be comfortable with hearing and responding to different view points. Part of the job. Guess not on her blog though as you said.
I didn’t read the link, only the quote. I expected it was going to be about open primaries, which could be a respectable point. But then there’s a quantum jump all of a sudden that throws in all kinds of assumptions and non sequiturs. It’s assumed that Republicans voted in Dem primaries to nominate Obama as a set up, and, further, that they did the same with Gore and/or Kerry and others? And that Hillary somehow would keep them “out of our race”?
Maybe it’s unfair to judge from just the small quote. OTOH, given the nature of the Net, the quality of the thought here suggests just another tedious journey into a mind scrambled with alcohol or other drugs.
Boo, I sure don’t envy you your burden of having to maintain pride in blogging, a medium that’s 99 percent crap. Guess I’m just a quitter.
If Hillary supporters want to get rid of open primaries, they’ve got four years until the next election. They can get rid of same-day registration (to prevent Repubs from crossing) too. And caucuses and anything else they want, as long as they can get enough people to support them.
Right now it sounds like another excuse.
yeah, i find her premise quite implausible, and she holds it because, i think, she (and all hillary bloggers w/the same premise) are blinded by their support of hillary.
why the hell would the gop rather run against obama than hillary? hillary has the biggest negatives since anyone i can remember. hillary the candidate comes w/tons of baggage that the gop doesn’t even have to dig up, just remind everyone.
sure, there are core bigots in the gop that would never vote for obama, but more moderate repubbbs would be more pre-disposed to knee-jerk against hillary than obama.
ergo, in their minds, the only explanation for obama’s success has to be the gop gaming the dem primaries. it can’t be because hillary’s made a million mis-steps in her campaign, or because people are just tired of politics as usual, and that’s what she represents. it must be because the gop is crossing over in the primaries.
t-rex had a great post a few nights ago about how talkleft and taylor marsh have seem to devolved from thoughtful, analytical bloggers into hillary-at-all-costs us v. them partisans.
too bad, because i really admire jeralyn (and also taylor). even more so, because i believe, at the end of the day, hillary would make (nominally) the better president. but i think obama’s more electable.
either way, i don’t think either candidate is worth all the tsuris going thru blogtopia and yes, i coined that phrase.
here’s the trex post i was talking about.
While Republicans have often crossed the aisle in open primaries to vote for weak Dem candidates, I rather suspect that Republicans who care that much were busy voting on their own side of the aisle in what started as a hotly contested race for them with all of their major factions at odds. They didn’t have the time or energy to deal with us prior to McCain settling in as heir apparent, and now they lack the enthusiasm to do much else.
Frankly, I think a lot of the venom amongst activist partisans comes down to the anti-racists on one side and the anti-sexists on the other seeing what they perceive as the chance of a lifetime and fighting tooth and nail for it. Ultimately, such motives are noble but pointless: people aren’t racists or sexists because they are rationally evaluating the evidence, and a female president or a black president is not going to change the minds of sexists or racists. Their minds are already closed, or they probably wouldn’t be bigots in the first place.
Better debunking through words substitution:
Who’s really picking our GREEN PARTY nominee? If it’s the GREEN PARTY youth or African American voters, I’m okay with that. That’s fair. If it’s Republicans, I’m not. We’ll get trounced in November. Without reliable stats to show [IMAGINARY NADER CHALLENGER]’s support is from those who will [vote] for the GREEN PARTY in November, I’d say the best way to ensure Republicans stay out of our race and don’t steal another election from us is for GREENS to vote for NADER to be the nominee.
Because calls for ideological purity are always guaranteed to expand the party.
where little is racist but everything is apparently sexist.
The political analysis there is the worst. Even compared to the Gate Keepers at MyDD.
I debunked them and got banned.
They went ballistic over Obama saying, yeah I would consider using Republicans in my cabinet.
Of course this made him the anti-Christ.
I simply pointed out to them. That John Edwards had said earlier that he would definitly put Republicans in his cabinet.
Poof. I was no longer allowed to post comments.
BJC says HRC will send GHWB around the world as an envoy. Probably get banned if you point that out though.
What this is asking – from the poll-watching fanatic perspective – is whether the cross-over voters are principled cross-over voters or tactical cross-over voters. Whether Obama has really attracted their support or whether he is just a foil for them to defeat Hillary Clinton, much like the Romney Democrats in Michigan.
Why I think it’s a minor concern is the Obama Republicans that I know. They are enthusiastic about politics for the first time since they were saying “Ronald Reagan”. Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t. It’s something about the communication thing.
What I’m curious to know is how much what I’m seeing is generally true of the cross-over voters.
The only organized cross-over voting that has gone on at all is Republicans strategically voting for Hillary. The most organized I saw it was in Virginia, and Obama beat her something like 3-1 among Republicans. Obama is attracting registered Republicans in much bigger numbers than any strategic vote against him.
And, obviously, there is no strategic voting against Obama for the obvious reason that he polls better against McCain in almost every state in almost every poll so far conducted.
should say ‘no strategic voting for Obama.’
There was a report of “raiding” against Obama (i.e. Republicans voting for Clinton) in the context of the Potomac primaries, but there is little evidence to support the idea that this has been occurring at more than negligible levels — against either candidate.
The problem with the TalkLeft raiding thesis is that crossover potential for Obama is clearly indicated in opinion polls, where there is no strategic advantage. Independents have also shown a strong preference for Obama, and they lack the adversarial motives present in inter-party raiding. Any possible raiding effect has been swamped by earnest crossover voters, so it’s hard to see this strategy as having played much of a role in the outcome.
One other factor revealed in anecdotal accounts is the amount of anti-Hillary sentiment driving crossover voting. This would not constitute true raiding, which is when voters cast a vote for the weaker candidate in the opposing party, but a few Republicans are apparently willing forgo strategy in order to hurt Clinton.
Of course, the raiding thesis is strongly dependent on Clinton being the frontrunner — which is contrary to fact. I realize there may still have been some voters who regarded Clinton as a threat until recently and voted strategically, but the perception of Clinton as a frontrunner hasn’t been widespread. This perception seems to be mostly present within the Clinton campaign itself and amongst its supporters. However, the TalkLeft thesis also ignores all the evidence that strongly suggests that — besides the strong performance by the Obama campaign — the reason for the Clinton campaign’s lack of success relates to the poor job they’ve done.
As I’ve pointed out recently, this appears to be a classic case of denial. Curiously, the Obama-mania theme, which is highly overblown and part of the media’s narrative, attempts to explain Obama support through psychological dynamics, even though the only unusual psychological dynamics I’ve observed are in the Clinton camp. This continuing stream of rationalizations are what solidified my support for Obama and repulsed me from the Clinton candidacy.
This is on the Republicans who are crossing over. It’s hard to see this as a strategy, especially since many are high profile Republicans who have endorsed Obama publicly. The rank-and-file Republicans attracted to Obama certainly sound earnest, too.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gopobama25feb25,1,6065255.story?track=rss
l think they’ve got it backwards.
l would posit that if the RATpublicans were going to cross-over in support of a candidate they’d wish to run against, they’d vote for hillary.
her nomination would energize the RAT base like no other single issue. she’s the one they want, as they’ve spent years preparing for her…obama, he’s a very difficult and different problem.
now, they have to find another reason to rally behind st. john the panderer, and that’s gonna be a hard row.
They’ll find a way…
I actually spent Friday and Saturday going back and forth with Big Tent Democrat avoiding the Russ Feingold vote for Obama. He spends most of his efforts degrading Obama and defending Clinton, but claims to be a “tepid” Obama supporter. I believe he claims to lean Obama so that his arguments against him and for Hillary carry more weight. I also asked why that site, which reveres Russ Feingold, completely ignored his vote for Obama. I was basically told to take a hike, do it on my own blog. Same thing I was told by Taylor Marsh after disagreeing (politely) with her.
Funny kind of support. With friends like those…
I don’t want to give them traffic. I have a question Martin : Was that written by Armando or Jeralyn?
Is this what is know as attacking the messenger?
Jeralyn has always been a biased blogger from the get-go. From her incredibly disgusting posts defending her FRIENDS who are some of the most disgusting lawyers around. Her Libby trial coverage was not that good it was emptywheel(who is the gold standard)that was great.
She now has been tag teaming with her friend Taylor Marsh posting the most insane anti-Obama posts.
Armando who has it in for Josh Marshal because Josh has more talent in his pinky than that bi-polar Big Tent DemoCRAP has in his entire being! Pretends to be uncommited to any candidate, but he is just a liar, he is still hurting from being run out of the Big Orange Satan’s site, and rightfully so.
It is going to be interesting what happens to these blogs when this primary season is over.
Talk Left is easy to debunk…it is insignificant, mediocre writing at it’s best.
I have a sister in FLA, a right-wing Repub who just turned 60, who would rather believe that it was illegal aliens who showed up at that precinct down there to vote up 110% of the registered voters rather than some kind of election fraud. She doesn’t want to believe that elections are fixed or that you can’t count on Diebold et al to function honestly or properly, so she’d rather round up the usual suspects to take the fall.
There’s two kinds of thinking: There’s the kind of thinking to get you to a position and then there’s the kind of thinking to protect your position. If you do a lot of that first kind of thinking you don’t have to do the second kind to justify yourself.
I suspect that there is that second kind of thinking over at TalkLeft. Obama is now their usual suspect.
How’s this for missing the point?
I don’t know why I care so much about Talk Left either. Talk Left was one of the first blogs I read. It’s not so good now but I get drawn in. I really like Jeralyn’s perspective on criminal law issues. Someone needs to point out the insanity of our criminal system and there is a much needed role for advocates like her. Jeralyn is good on criminal issues.
Which is why I am befuddled as to why she has gone off the deep end in her support of Hillary. If Jeralyn’s top issue is criminal policy I have no clue why she would support Hillary. It’s dumbfounding. I have lost a lot of respect for her as to how she has allowed Talk Left to become a silly partisan blog. I don’t know why she changed the focus of her blog for this primary season. It’s a very short-sighted decision and one that may backfire.
And Big Tent Democrat drives me crazy. He dominates the comment threads and browbeats anyone that disagrees with him. It’s juvenile and no way to run a blog. The comments policy and heavy censoring of comments is also juvenile. BTD asked that I be banned but I guess Jeralyn disagreed with him (we got into a heated discussion over the “pimped out” comments and Big Tent gave himself a time out because of his temper tantrum aimed at me–someone then deleted that part of the thread). Basically, they have an unworkable comments policy and are extremely biased in their application of this policy.
Anyway. I read BooMan for political commentary in general. I read Jeralyn for criminal-related issues. Jeralyn should get back to doing what she does well. She might not get the same traffic but it will be better for her in the long run.
Here’s another piece of amazing analysis:
That is just par for the course. ‘If by some miracle he does win [the nomination, presumably], I expect him to go down in McGovernlike defeat in the general.’
Of course, anything could happen in the general, but it would take a miracle for Clinton to win the nomination at this point. And all polling shows Obama as currently the much stronger opponent for McCain than Clinton.
Not to toot my own horn too much, but other than New Hampshire, my predictions in this race have been so accurate I have even surprised myself. But, you know, that’s because I put some effort into thinking these things through.
Picking up a commenter’s comments from another blog and bringing them to your own blog is a practice started by people I don’t respect. I hate to see it picked up here.
It’s one thing to respond to a formal blog post. Comments should be left alone. If you want to respond go over there and join the conversation.
Just my opinion.
i think the comments of a blog reflect on the leadership of a blog. If you’re an idiot, you’re audience will be idiots, too. If you have no intellectual honesty, neither will your commenters.
ok
But that’s not really responsive to what I said.
I hate to see you use a tactic used by people I don’t respect — picking up comments from other blogs, bringing them over to your own blog and commenting on them.
Tough call.
It’s a that site will leave up comments calling Obama a “race baiter” but delete comments from black folk explaining why they think various comments were racist dogwhistles.
They’ll also leave up comments using right-wing smears against Obama and Obama’s wife but delete comments critical of those comments.
Additionally, they’ll point out when they think Obama has been less than polite but delete comments showing objectionable practices by the Clintons.
Seems like the conduct of the site owners leaves the entire site open for criticism.
not my point at all.
BooMan knows what I’m talking about.
And nutpicking isn’t very helpful….
Though you are missing the best part of that comment.
Obama is the most unprogressive, but he’s going to go down like McGovern….
nutpicking? sounds squirrelly to me. π
LOL–Kevin Drum came up with it to describe picking out a comment in a post and posting it as hard evidence of the moral degeneracy of some blog.
And Clinton is progressive? Oh, do tell.
Obama himself has said, on several occasions, that he does not believe his supporters would vote for the Democrat in the general elect if he is not the nominee. Certainly that implies that HE believes that he is getting votes from many non-traditional Democratic sources.
What is so outrageous about discussion of this issue? Historically, we have seen other campaigns where independent and moderate Republicans provided the edge for the winning Democrat in the primaries; Dukakis is ’88, Jimmy Carter in ’76 (the only Democrat any of my conservative Republican, midwestern relatives have ever voted for), and McGovern in ’72. In two out of the three cases, that support in the primaries evaporated in the general election. That history makes this a legitimate issue for discussion.
I’m not a fan of “electability” arguments, myself. But they are being made all over the blogs, certainly not just on Talk Left. I’m sure you don’t object to arguments against Clinton’s electability, or for Obama’s electability, whether they come from Obama and his campaign directly or from the blogosphere. Do you think arguments supporting the notion that Obama’s voters won’t vote for Clinton, or that people should vote for Obama in the primaries because Clinton is less “electable” “are an insult to genre of left-wing blogging?”
Here’s the bottom line — both candidates have a lot of supporters, and have earned that support. Suggesting that there is something wrong in any blogger making arguments in Clintons favor — that it is something that “good” Democrats or progressives don’t do — is not likely to be helpful in bringing her supporters into the Obama camp after he gets the nomination, if he gets the nomination.
Booman
Your post is titled “Debunking Talk Left”. Then you paste in a passage from a TL post, which presumably you were going to specifically debunk.
I’m trying to find the debunking. Did you have something?
Seriously, this post is a mess – sure you just don’t want to delete it and start over tomorrow?
Funny the title of this entry should be “Debunking Talk Left,” when in your post, you do nothing of the sort. Just ad hominem. I don’t agree with Talk Left’s statement, but you do nothing to refute it.
And anyone who begins a sentence with “Not to toot my own horn too much” ought to be laughed off the stage, especially when they follow it with “but other than…”
Christ, how old are you? Could you be more convinced of your invincibility?
No wonder people think Obamaites are cultists.
Good luck in November, ’cause you’re going to need the Clintonites, whom you have made every effort to insult, to win.
a) the point is that it is so stupid that expending effort to debunk it is beneath me.
b) as to my invincibility, I never said that. My record is there for everyone to look at. I’ve predicted pretty much exactly what has happened all the way down the line. The people at Talk Left’s predictions have been wrong at almost every juncture.
Why?
Because they aren’t trying to be accurate, they are shilling.
I don’t see where anyone’s predictive powers comes into this. The passage you quote doesn’t predict who will be the nominee — it raises the issue of whether or not independents and Republicans who vote in the Democratic primaries will show up for that candidate in the general. The historic record makes that a legitimate concern to raise.
you’re the one that said I thought I was invincible.
The quote in question suggests that Obama is only winning the nomination on the strength of Republican voters. That requires no detailed debunking as it is patently false.
And the point is, it ain’t about you.
You are one person in 300 million in this country, one of six billion in the world.
Beneath you?
The entire presidential, political process in this country is beneath anyone who aspires to the position.
Anyone’s daily life could be considered beneath him/her.
I currently am a “consultant.” Don’t want to toot my own horn, but I am very good at what I do, but for that time… I have to drag my ass up, walk several avenues to get to a train that adds two hours to my work day, for which I’m not paid, to attend a 20 minute meeting during which younger “masters of the universe” spend the first ten minutes slapping their butts and comparing cock size.
This all has nothing to do with the job I am supposed and expected to do, has nothing to do with my skill. It is a major waste of my time, an insult to my maturity and skill, and a waste of everyones’ time and money. It is, quite frankly, beneath me. It’s also known as corporate life in America.
But we wouldn’t want YOU to do something beneath you.
I guess it sucks to be you.
Doesn’t suck to be me.
Sucks to be as clueless as you.
It must really suck to have nothing else to do besides telling people you don’t know the boring details of your life, and then thinking that anyone cares, and then compounding the idiocy by claiming your life doesn’t suck. Just who is clueless here?
And lovely to find that Obama’s friends are so heart-warming.
map106, you came here and insulted people for the purpose of pushing H. Clinton and her supporters’ reality. Help us with your reality. Prove that Obama is winning because Republicans are crossing over. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
This kind of personal attack being waged here on Talk Left is the kind of thing that is an insult to left-wing political blogging. I like to read this blog, Talk Left, and many others. I don’t have to agree with everyone all the time. In fact the disagreements, when they don’t devolve into middle school personal attacks, are some of the more interesting posts to read. Now that Talk Left doesn’t support Obama the writers there can’t write, their coverage of the Libby trial sucked, they are just dumb lawyers anyway,etc. Armando is cut some slack as he must be under her spell or something. Maybe you guys need to take a break from politics for awhile and lower the bile level here a bit.
Maybe. Did you travel over there and say the same thing?
A friend of mine tried to point out that the HRC campaign was trying to link Obama with the Weather Underground but they kept deleting the comment apparently. Dissent is not only not tolerated it’s subject to extraordinary rendition and then likely waterboarded into submission.
We all know to NEVER question the minds or motives of Republicans during an election year! That’s the lesson we all should have learned.
But at the end of the day, even the pure and delicate thoughts of an Obama supporter can be corrupted once to cross over and vote for Romney-R in Michigan.
Five or six weeks ago I presumed that Clinton was going to win the nomination. She wasn’t my favorite, in fact she was my least favorite of the active candidates, but Kucinich never had a chance, Edwards dropped out before I could vote for him. Obama’s well-run campaign has been a revelation, and Clinton’s poorly-run campaign has been shocking to me.
I have been shocked at how quickly the Clinton supporters presume and call out anyone who doesn’t like Clinton as a candidate as a sexist or misogynist. It seems like there is no middle ground. When the “pimp” comment was an issue I was told repeatedly that the guy from MSNBC actually was accusing the Clintons of selling Chelsea for sex. It had to be literal because figurative wasn’t a big enough insult.
I think some of this is because of H. Clinton losing 11 in a row. As they see their candidate slipping they are becoming desperate. They have to imagine people who vote for Obama as cultists because to afford reasonable people the choice and to have them vote for someone other than H. Clinton.
I agree that TalkLeft has become bizarre in its over-the-top Clinton support. I never read Taylor Marsh before this afternoon and the heavy presumption of sin for not supporting Clinton probably means that there’s no reason to go back.
I just hate to see the Dems falling apart so early. Look, I voted for Clinton knowing that he’d push through NAFTA, and I voted for him again, considering the alternatives. And if Clinton is the nominee I’ll vote for her. I’d just rather vote for Obama because less people hate him than Clinton.
…that so-called “progressives” are so totally enthralled and enamored of Billary’s DLC nonsense. I’m just completely amazed.
Talk about hero-worship. And it doesn’t even make sense. Years of silence in the face of the Bush administration and now she “fights”? Right.
Oh no, it’s the “progressive” Hillbots who are naive and just dumber than dirt. Billary lives to fight other Democrats. They live to triangulate other Democrats.
Anything else just demonstrates who was NOT paying attention during the 90s. So all of them can put down Kool Aid, do some research, and get back to me.
Booman has singlehandedly convinced me to vote for McCain.
Good job Booman. Nothing like a progressive to show how little progressives are progressive.
Golly gee, I gots to vote for Obama. Booman predicted everything. Next you’ll be volunteering for the Executive Editor of the NYT.
that’s great. I hope you enjoy voting for McCain.
Your commitment to your candidate is heartwarming. π
You go, map. If booman convinced you to vote for McCain, maybe if you stay in McCain’s camp long enough you’ll write in Gus Hall.