I'm just asking, cause I honestly haven't paid attention in the past, but are debates a common thing between the candidates before the conventions? It seems early to be getting into it at this point. I don't think I'm up for another 25 debates between the two same people...
They're not. Which is why it would a refreshing change(a word Obama is familiar with) to have a Presidential campaign where the two nominees actually discuss issues with voters in an unscripted format.
He didn't - McCain just wanted them on his own terms, and Obama wanted them on his own terms. Of course, those terms were very different between the two candidates.
I could see that, as there are many of us who are eager to see them head to head...but you can't fault Obama for not taking him up on his townhall meetings. That only favors McCain for the time being, since Obama could be more productive out campaigning somewhere to a far greater number of people. Obama isn't a fantastic debater, but regardless of style, I think it's pretty clear that McCain is going to look like a corpse compared to him in televised debates. If I were in Obama's campaign, I'd wait as long as possible to play up that angle so the idea was as fresh as possible in voter's minds.
He's not good at all at extemporaneous speaking. Of course, neither is McCain, but McCain's also not very good at delivering prepared speeches, so it doesn't matter much. Obama looks significantly better than McCain when delivering a prepared speech or answer to a question that he's been prepped on. If Obama and McCain have a town hall debate where they're both speaking off the cuff, Obama will be pulled down to McCain's level.
I've never been a townhall meeting fan...especially since it's hard to tell who are "plants". Plus I hate hearing people complain in the form of a question. I wish instead of a townhall meeting or a regular debate the candidates would ask EACH OTHER questions. You could have a moderator there who is almost like a judge who decides if the questions are phrased unfairly or dishonestly. It could potentially get kinda heated, which would be totally interesting.
McCain proposed townhall debates, Obama said it sounded like a great idea. McCain proposed one in New York. Bloomberg set a date and time, and both McCain and Obama rejected it. That was the the last we heard about townhalls. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25050930/ I don't see how that correlates to Obama rejecting the idea. Since then, the McCain campaign has devolved into simple mudslinging. He no longer talks about issues, so I'm not sure a townhall would even make sense anymore. It would just be an unmoderated forum for McCain to say he doesn't think Obama is patriotic or whatever nonsense.
Where have I heard this before? Yeah. It'd be great for the interested voters. It'd be tough to get a campaign manager to agree to it, though.
When McCain first proposed the townhalls, here was Obama's response: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/06/lincolndouglas_debate_proposal.html Obama team responds, sorta, to McCain's proposed joint town halls: “As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country. We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. But, having just secured our party’s nomination, this is one of the many items we will be addressing in the coming days and look forward to discussing it with the McCain campaign,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. As I understand it, McCain's proposal had the structure it did -- which isn't much -- only because they feared Obama would not agree to what they really wanted, described by one aide as "two mics and an audience." Honestly, it's hard to imagine how the format could get much looser. No moderator? Unlimited time? It sounds a little like Obama wants to eliminate the audience Q&A portion of the idea, which, if anything, is a way to more firmly control the content. Would welcome thoughts from readers as to what they'd like to see. The problem with the "two mics and an audience" thing is that without structure, the format is likely degenerate. One candidate will talk too much; the other will get upset; etc. But I do agree with the criticism on the removing Q&A part if that's the case.
Hum.... Two Gallup Polls, One Day: McCain And Obama Both Ahead? Today, the Gallup polling firm was for Barack Obama's lead over John McCain before they were against it. If that sounds complicated, it's only the beginning. Early Monday, Gallup released the latest of its daily tracking polls, which showed Obama holding an eight point lead over John McCain 48-40. Then, at the close of business, Gallup revealed results of its co-effort with USA Today, in which -- gasp! -- John McCain was shown to have a four-point lead over Obama. In the latter instance, the metric being evaluated was one near and dear to the hearts of pollsters, the "likely voter." In the earlier poll that showed Obama ahead, Gallup merely surveyed registered voters. Obama partisans would perhaps point out that the Illinois Democrat's entire campaign is based on drawing new voters -- or "unlikely voters" in the parlance of pollsters -- into in the political process. Many observers have taken the record-breaking turnout from the Democrats' primary season as empirical evidence of an unusual enthusiasm among rank and file voters on that side of the partisan divide. Which makes investigating the Gallup/USA Today "likely voter" statistics all the more odd. Besides its rare finding of a McCain lead, almost all of the voters deemed "unlikely" to turn out just so happened to be Obama voters. Emory Univeristy political scientist Alan Abramowitz broke it down for the Huffington Post. Noting that out of the 900 voter sample surveyed by Gallup/USA Today, the pollsters deemed 791 of those individuals to be "likely" ones, and it is their responses which make up the 49-45 figure that immediately got coverage on MSNBC's Hardball. By contrast, the full 900 person sample of registered voters polled by USA Today showed Obama with a 47-44 lead. So what about those 109 unlikely voters? According to Abramowitz, "among your 109 unlikely voters, according to Gallup, Obama leads McCain by a whopping 61 percent to 7 percent. Putting it another way, according to Gallup 16 percent of registered Obama supporters are unlikely to vote compared with only 2 percent of registered McCain supporters." Meanwhile, Gallup's independent tracking poll is conducted with an entirely different -- and larger -- sample of 3,000 voters. And Abramowitz notes that this isn't the first time Gallup has courted controversy in calculating "likely" voters. "Eight years ago the Gallup organization got in hot water for using a likely voter screen several weeks before Election Day that produced wild fluctuations in candidate preference. At one point, the Gallup tracking poll went from an 8 point Gore lead to an 11 point Bush lead in three days. Of course, this was nonsense. The wild swings in the tracking poll were almost entirely caused by the likely voter screen. Those results were not to be believed. And neither are these." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/two-gallup-polls-one-day_n_115473.html
I had guessed earlier in another thread that in the short term polls Obama would drop because of his foreign jaunt. In the long term though, I believe this has erased some doubts as to his ability to handle foreign affairs and relate to the troops.
obama would only agree to one town hall, only on july 4th, when most voters wouldn't be paying attention. mccain has proposed a series of them, through out the fall campaign. obama has rejected his proposal.
If I've learned anything about political campaigns, it's this: polls are worthless, especially when they are taken half a year prior to the election.
