Arizona Senator John McCain (official)

[DaytonBuck]

[JXC]

Does McCain hate his dogs? I know one thing about politcal campaigning...you NEVER EVER let an animal in a shot live with you...you can't control animals. I mean what if the dog would have bit McCain, or [censored] on the floor. This proves there is no God...because if there were, then one of those dogs would have crapped right there on Juan Pablo McCain's shoe.

[CookyPuss]

Clever.

YouTube - THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF TEST

['BusNative]

This is confused at best. So now McCain's advisor and spokesman are directly contradicting something McCain said?

YouTube - McCain Adviser: JMC Doesn't Speak For...

[CookyPuss]

Marc Ambinder (July 30, 2008) - Weaver, McCain's Former Strategist, Calls "Celeb" Ad "Childish" (McCain)

John Weaver, for years one of John McCain's closest friends and confidants, has been in exile since his resignation from McCain's presidential campaign last year. With the exception of an occasional interview, he has, by his own account, bit his tongue as McCain's campaign has adopted a strategy that Weaver believes "diminishes John McCain."

With the release today of a McCain television ad blasting Obama for celebrity preening while gas prices rise, and a memo that accuses Obama of putting his own aggrandizement before the country, Weaver said he's had "enough."

The ad's premise, he said, is "childish."

"John's been a celebrity ever since he was shot down," Weaver said. "Whatever that means. And I recall Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush going overseas and all those waving American flags."

Weaver remains in contact with senior McCain strategists and, for a while early this year, regularly talked to McCain.

The strategy of driving up Obama's negatives "reduces McCain on the stage," Weaver said.

"For McCain to win in such troubled times, he needs to begin telling the American people how he intends to lead us. That McCain exists. He can inspire the country to greatness."

He added: "There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's. For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."

Stumper : Elitism: A Game Two Can Play

It makes just as much sense to call McCain an elitist as Obama. Nevermind that the Illinois senator is a bi-racial child from a broken family raised in a modest single-parent household. Or that there are plenty of "country clubs" still unwilling to accept African-Americans as members. Or that the last "celebrity" to occupy the Oval Office was Ronald Reagan, McCain's hero. Simply imagine the memo David Axelrod could send to reporters about the Republican nominee. "Only a celebrity of John McCain's magnitude could star on blockbuster television shows like '24' and appear in big-budget motion pictures like 'Wedding Crashers,'" it would read. "These are not campaign commercials or news interviews, but major Hollywood productions--which is no surprise, given that he's pals with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lorne Michaels. Only celebrities like John McCain own seven homes, date Brazilian models, marry blond heiresses worth $100 million, attend Virginia's tony "old boy" Episcopal High School, forget the last time they pumped their own gas and wear $520 black calfskin loafers by Ferragamo." Get the picture?

[fourteenandoh]

IMO being an elitist has nothing to do with the clothes you wear or who your friends are. its believing that you are better than someone else for some arbitrary reason. mccain campaigning in a grocery store while obama is having a rock concert in germany is not elitist. obama hanging out with rich people in san francisco and talking [censored] about people in pennsylvania because they like guns is. please keep this rubish personal opinion of some blogger out of the thread.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

IMO being an elitist has nothing to do with the clothes you wear or who your friends are. its believing that you are better than someone else for some arbitrary reason. mccain campaigning in a grocery store while obama is having a rock concert in germany is not elitist. obama hanging out with rich people in san francisco and talking [censored] about people in pennsylvania because they like guns is. please keep this rubish personal opinion of some blogger out of the thread.

I understand that this is not your opinion, so my comments are not aimed at you, but speaking at a grocery store is a political choice. So is speaking in Berlin, but its not as if the Obama campaign can control how many people show up to an outdoor event. Isn't it a little telling that thousands of people would not show up to see McCain no matter where he speaks?

[fourteenandoh]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

I understand that this is not your opinion, so my comments are not aimed at you, but speaking at a grocery store is a political choice. So is speaking in Berlin, but its not as if the Obama campaign can control how many people show up to an outdoor event. Isn't it a little telling that thousands of people would not show up to see McCain no matter where he speaks?

yes, they are both political choices. one is down to earth and the other is extremely presumptuous. he was out there acting like he's already the president.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

yes, they are both political choices. one is down to earth and the other is extremely presumptuous. he was out there acting like he's already the president.

How is speaking in Berlin different than speaking in Latin America? This presumptuous thing is getting played out. Was it not presumptuous for the McCain campaign to run weekly radio addresses as if he was POTUS? And if being 'presumptuous' is the only thing wrong with a candidate, isn't the other candidate lacking... something?

[fourteenandoh]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

How is speaking in Berlin different than speaking in Latin America? This presumptuous thing is getting played out. Was it not presumptuous for the McCain campaign to run weekly radio addresses as if he was POTUS? And if being 'presumptuous' is the only thing wrong with a candidate, isn't the other candidate lacking... something?

that's not the only thing wrong with him

[CookyPuss]

Dick Move of the Week - McCain Attacks | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Comedy Central

This is well worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch. Classic Jon Stewart smack down.

[BuckeyeMike80]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

IMO being an elitist has nothing to do with the clothes you wear or who your friends are. its believing that you are better than someone else for some arbitrary reason. mccain campaigning in a grocery store while obama is having a rock concert in germany is not elitist. obama hanging out with rich people in san francisco and talking [censored] about people in pennsylvania because they like guns is. please keep this rubish personal opinion of some blogger out of the thread.

Obama couldn't possibly be an elitist - he talks about the nebulous fiction of "hope" after all.....

[CookyPuss]

Originally Posted by BuckeyeMike80

Obama couldn't possibly be an elitist - he talks about the nebulous fiction of "hope" after all.....

I would say there is a major difference between being "elite" and being "elitist." You have to be elite in our society to run for president. Obama is running on a populist economic platform, McCain is running on an elitist economic platform. Obama may have had an elite education, but he also worked in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago and had a mother who was on food stamps for a time. McCain grew up in a wealthy family and married into a beer fortune. Karl Rove started floating the elitist tag months ago. He used it on Kerry and Gore. It's a tried and true strategy of the Republicans... attack your opponent on your own weakness. It puts them on defense and muddies the water. Obama may have hit it big in the last 4 years, but before that he knew what it was like to struggle to pay bills. Obama didn't work as an instructor at U of Chicago because he wasn an "elitist" professor, he did it as a 2nd or 3rd job to make ends meet. The Obamas were upper middle-class until his book sales boomed after his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. He has a perspective that McCain will never have.

Obama's problem is that he is a bit of an intellectual and I'm guessing that he is also an introvert. This causes him at times to appear "aloof" when he is too much in his own head. People who are highly introspective (which Obama is if you read his books) tend to come off this way. He also likely learned to keep his emotions in check as a black man navigating in an elite white society (at Columbia and Harvard). Obama has always been careful not to come off as an angry black man. The downside is that he can come off as emotionally disconnected. These character issues do not make him "elitist."

[LitlBuck]

Originally Posted by MuckFich06

I would say there is a major difference between being "elite" and being "elitist." You have to be elite in our society to run for president. Obama is running on a populist economic platform, McCain is running on an elitist economic platform. Obama may have had an elite education, but he also worked in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago and had a mother who was on food stamps for a time. McCain grew up in a wealthy family and married into a beer fortune. Karl Rove started floating the elitist tag months ago. He used it on Kerry and Gore. It's a tried and true strategy of the Republicans... attack your opponent on your own weakness. It puts them on defense and muddies the water. Obama may have hit it big in the last 4 years, but before that he knew what it was like to struggle to pay bills. Obama didn't work as an instructor at U of Chicago because he wasn an "elitist" professor, he did it as a 2nd or 3rd job to make ends meet. The Obamas were upper middle-class until his book sales boomed after his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. He has a perspective that McCain will never h."

Stop it. I think I'm about to cry.

[CookyPuss]

Originally Posted by LitlBuck

Stop it. I think I'm about to cry.

TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect

Clearly McCain is trying to gain some traction by accusing Obama of being an elitist. But as Jake Tapper, Chris Hayes and Andrew Romano point out, McCain is much wealthier, has much less connection to the middle class, and promotes economic policies that benefit wealthy elites at the expense of the middle class. I would add that the type of elitism the left is pointing to -- a material elitism -- is quite different from the type of elitism McCain is charging Obama with, which is cultural elitism.

This is pretty much what I was getting at. The Obamas were not exactly struggling, but 250K a year (which they were earning until 2005) in Chicago is hardly elite. BTW, Michelle was pulling down half of that. FWIW, one of the primary reasons that Obama cites that he chose to run so early in his career is that he feels that he is not so far out of touch with what regular folks go through.