Redstate

Sen. Obama is more than likely the next President of the United States. I truly hope he does understand the difference between law-abiding pro-life politicians and violent domestic terrorists. And I'd really like to hear him explain that he knows the difference and what it is.

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"Sen. Obama is more than likely the next President of the United States"

REALLY!!! Why would you the guy who more than anyone has told us how great Senator McCain is and how we need to get behind him would say that Senator Obama is more than likely the next President.....Why is he more than likely the next President?
Do you know something the rest of us here do not?

Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion

And as of right now (according to InTrade), Obama has a 50% chance, McCain a 40% chance, and Clinton a 10% chance. The market by party similarly has Ds with a 60% chance and Rs with a 40% chance.

These are notably better than before McCain won the nomination. Ds got as high as a 66-70% chance of winning during part of the primaries. But Rs have not had more than a 50% chance of winning since 2006 or so. This should be a D landslide year. Rs are fortunate that McCain, at the least, will stop it from being a landslide.

But winning is going to very hard. Romney was losing in polls 55-35. Huckabee had similar margins. I'm sure they would have improved but a 10-12 point loss (55-45) was very possible and perhaps even likely. Now a 10 point loss would be a big change. The most likely outcome is a 3-5 point Obama win similar to Bush's 51-48 showing.

McCain's odds of winning are higher than any other R who ran. But they are still less than 50%.

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There will be a general election campaign. There will be debates. There will be head-to-head comparison ads.

Futures markets are snapshots in time that are little better than a poll when it comes to the end result.

What did the futures markets say about Clinton's chances 6 months ago?

Futures markets (unlike polls) actually do consider the effect of future events. People are putting money on what will happen in November, not "if the election were today."

The real criticism (and what I think you meant) is that these are probabilities. And anything in the future is figured in as a probability. The probability that we find out Obama has 8 illegitimate children (p=.000001). But if it happens (p=1) then the futures markets will adjust. But those markets probably figure in the odds of McCain having a nationally televised temper tantrum (p=.2). If it happens (p=1), his chance of winning goes down. If it doesn't (p=0) then his chance goes up.

But the reason they are helpful is because they aggregate all those probabilities and their expected impact on the outcome of the election. Yes the probabilities change over time, but they have been stable and I wouldn't bet against them right now. If you think McCain has a better than 40% chance at winning, you can put money on it.

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The MSM will support Obama.

Obama will have a well-tested groound team with a lot of kool-aid drinking volunteers.

And now McCain has conceded the money race:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9737.html

This does not look good. Instead of reassuring ourselved that Obama will necissarily go down, we should engage in stratigies that might actually do something positive.

http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/news/displaystory.cfm?id=1860

don't just stick with intrade...

Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion

I wouldn't put too much stock in futures markets 6 months away from an election.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

Remember back to those GOP debates when Huck and McCain were attacking Mitt? He really is not very good at it. I think it may be out of character for him.

However, he is going to need quilt together the Ayers/Michelle/Wright mosaic to portray Obama as a leftist out of touch with mainstream America.

he is going to need quilt together the Ayers/Michelle/Wright mosaic to portray Obama as a leftist...

That's what he did here. I thought he was rather effective doing it.

I like Sen. McCain a lot. Yet I have to admit he can come across pretty mean on occasion. The one debate where McCain and Huckabee were really attacking Mitt Romney they both came across rather nasty. Sen. McCain has that odd little laugh when he's criticizing an opponent he despises. So I don't doubt that when he gets engaged he'll be able to drive a verbal knife into Sen. Obama. What I'm not sure of is whether he'll be able to do it with the sort of calm, detached, "just the facts" attitude to get his point across (no pun intended) without looking mean.

It will probably be more successful if Sen. McCain remains extremely polite, professional, and calm as he points out (more in sorrow than in anger) that his very nice colleague from Illinois has really bad ideas on.....

I think many in the media see 1960s radicalism as a big social movement that went too far but is in the past. They don't see anti-war terrorists as similar to abortion clinic bombing terrorists. Both want to change public policy through violence and justify their actions as defending life in the long term.

But the media sees Ayers and his ilk as a throw back to the past, not relevant in the current issues debate. If an Iraq War protester bombed the pentagon and Obama went to a fundraiser at his home, I think it would get the press' attention. But many people in the media want to "move on" from Vietnam and deal with current issues. Abortion is a current issue and thus clinic bombers would be seen as relevant.

All that said, I think the media is wrong to avoid looking into this. It was Obama's choice to fraternize and fundraise with an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Since he has such a short voting record, Obama's judgment and choices concerning his church, his allies, his associates, and his political fundraisers need to be looked into.

And if his judgment is that Rev. Wright should not be denounced and domestic terrorists are no different than pro-life politicians, then the media should follow up and make that clear.

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you seem to be depending on the media doing something they are simply not going to do.

And depending on McCain to take on his fellow Senator by the throat is a lot cause. McCain has spent a lifetime practicing Senatorial Collegiality and I think he is going to get his legs cut off by a Chicago street thug who doesn't have a lifetime invested in Senatorial Collegiality. Regretably you may be right about Obama being the next president; time to be taking steps to protect your family, fortune and honor because it will be a very, very rough four years for America.

John
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Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course

Try this little experiement; get into an discussion with a devoted Democrat about abortion. Bring a stop watch, and for the purposes of this experiment, make sure you *dont* bring up religion; keep to the idea that taking an innocent human life is fundamentally immoral, particularly when it's for no other reason that that life represents an inconvenience to someone else.

Stop the stopwatch at the point where your Dem friend accuses you of supporting the bombing of abortion clinics. I'd be really surprised if you manage to get much farther than 5 minues.

As far as the liberals are concerned, ANYONE who opposes abortion is in the same class as Eric Rudolph, be they Christian, Jew, Mulim or polka-dot. That's why it wasn't that big a stretch for Barry O. to compare Coburn to Ayres, at least not in the liberal mindset.
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