I'll tell you why. First, the macro level. Then, why I will not vote for Obama.
My opinion on why the public is turning against him:
First, talking to European friends and Europeans who live here in the US that have been to Europe recently, you take such a one-sided socialist view of everything here. I.E. I have a coworker from Turkey who was in Switzerland last week and every book store has Obama Obama Obama, and not just the same book but several different Obama books. Walking around Europe you are obsessed with Obama (if you like him so much, make him Chancellor of the EU) and you wouldn't even know there IS any opposition to him. Talk about biased views. Additionally, let me let you Europeans in on a little secret: it makes us mad when you pull so hard for a candidate, we don't want your opinion on who YOU want. It's none of your business.
Second, a lot of people on the Democratic side were very big Hillary Clinton supporters and have a hard time voting for Obama, as this was supposed to be Hillary's big moment. Obama is a political nobody, he comes out of the corrupt Chicago political system with a background in "community organizing" (read: professional protester and shakedown artist ala Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) and he is a lightweight with only 2 years in the Senate. Hillary supporters are stunned because in their view (and probably in Hillary's) the Democratic Nomination was a lock.
An offshoot to this: America is no longer a melting pot because politicians thrive on division. The corollary is, take for example the Democratic party, it is a group of special interests that sometimes conflict. Take for example, union labor vs. environmentalists. Both are special interest groups whose goals may conflict -- labor unions want more jobs and construction, environmentalists want to halt civilization and stop polluting the planet. In this case, we have the feminists who were behind Hillary versus the affirmative action racketeers -- either the first Woman president or the first Black president. Someone had to lose, and the Hillary camp is bruised and upset.
Further, if you look at this from Hillary's political ambitions, it's advantageous for Obama to lose so she can run again in 2012. Further, if Obama wins trust me he will clean the Democrat Party infrastructure of the Clinton people that still control it and install his own people. So I expect there is some sabotage on the part of the Clintons and I expect 2 weeks before the election her camp will give McCain's folks some heavily damaging dirt.
Why I won't vote for Obama:
First, this Presidential cycle is strange because all three major candidates (Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, John McCain) are Senators. Senators are not executives, they don't run things, from a town to a county to a state. They have never had to make a budget or hire/fire people. Senators are people who spend most of their time out of their home state in Washington, DC, attending committee meetings and lining their pockets, jockeying for power. At the end of the day, they have virtually nothing to do with the day-to-day running of their state, they just bring home pork barrel money back to the state when it is time for re-election. Further, Senators have lengthy 6 year terms so they aren't re-connecting with their constituents as much as other politicians. It's hard to think of the last time a sitting Senator was elected President, I think it would be John F. Kennedy. Usually Governors are successful at Presidential bids over Senators, because Governors actually run their states on a day-to-day basis.
Second, I dislike both candidates. They are both big-government socialists (as is George W. Bush). Obama is the fast boat to outright socialism, McCain is the slow boat to outright socialism. They both are more likely to endorse policies I disagree with but one will do incidental damage to the country while the other is looking to run it off a cliff.
As much as the media is trying to portray McCain as some kind of right wing extremist, this is the same media who was pining for him as "The Maverick(tm)" against G.W. Bush 8 years ago, he was their favored candidate! McCain has several left wing viewpoints where he has stabbed his party in the back (e.g. he is pro-amnesty for illegal aliens, McCain-Kennedy) and worse his campaign finance bill (McCain-Feingold) restricts free speech preventing you from criticizing incumbent politicians 60 days before an election. On most issues, McCain is a liberal. He's long been one of the most liberal Republicans.
OBama, meanwhile, doesn't have as much of a record as he's only been in the Senate for 2 years and didn't distinguish himself before that in local Illinois politics. I don't care about his skin color, but I care a lot about his past. He is an outright socialist who thinks government is the answer to every question. He is a community agitator (aka shakedown artist). He tries to obscure his past (original father, brother in Kenya, 2nd father, Indonesia and his time in a Madrass, etc.). His teenage years were spent in an exclusive, expensive private school in Hawaii where his friends called him "Barry". He has unquestionable ties to shady figures, such as William Ayers, a leftist domestic terrorist who killed people with his bombs, and his hate-mongering reverand who baptised his children and spewed his hatred every Sunday but whom he dumped when the media spotlight was on and claimed he never heard any of the reverand's hate speech. He equates government to morality, urging us to remember the "least amongst us" (via taxes) while his brother lives in Kenya on $1 per month.
The thing that worries me about Obama are:
(1) He's a lightweight who dislodged Queen Hillary, heir apparent to the Democratic machine. There is more than meets the eye, here. Who is behind him, who is the unseen hand that is making this happen? (My bets are on the ilk of George Sauros, et al, who I view as viral and destructive). To overcome the Clinton's stranglehold on the Democratic party (most of Clinton's guys are still in charge) there is a large force at work.
(2) He seems to be vastly incompetent. Not only does he have negligible experience in the senate, but he's never actually run or managed anything, not a lemonade stand, not a town council, NOTHING.
(3) For all his talk of "change", all his rhetoric is straight out of FDR's New Deal (1933), LBJ's Great Society (1964), if not Marx/Ingles. Change by itself isn't necessarily good.
(4) The media is in love with him for his great speeches. In opposition to George W. Bush's stammerring. I think a lot of people are being shallow and simply looking for a figurehead who at least appears to speak well. Anyone paying attention (i.e. not just seeing 30 second clips in the media) will note that Obama turns into a stammering stream of "uhhhhhs" when he's off script. He's good at reading, terrible at improvisational speaking.
(5) He says incredibly stupid things (such as there are 57 states in the US, or Iran is geographically small and thus isn't a threat) that would have gotten Dan Quayle or George Bush on the opening Leno/Letterman monologues for months, but the media ignores his gaffes. I really don't think Obama is intelligent at all.
So let's see, he has no executive experience, he isn't bright, and he seems to be a puppet. What's not to like? :lol:
I don't like both candidates. However, McCain has the benefits of experience and fundamentally I feel his is a decent human being. The down sides are that he's old, very old, and being President takes lots of stamina. And that VP pick couldn't have been worse, what the hell is he thinking?
On the issues they are virtually the same to me aside from the following areas:
- The war. Obama let's face it won't pull out so quickly as he promised early in his candidacy. Obama's posture is weak and don't think that thugs in Iran and Venezuela aren't salivating if he gets in. McCain is more hawkish. I wish either one would take steps to end the war in Iraq without an outright pullout or collapse because that just strengthens Ahmedinejad.
- Abortion. Obama is so radical that he is in favor of infanticide (voted in Chicago to deny medical care to babies that survive late term abortions -- in other words they are left to die a painful death outside the womb and die of starvation/dehydration, not even euthanized). McCain is probably pro-choice but has to pander to the religious. Either way, I don't feel a candidate will tackle this. It didn't change under right wingers like Nixon or Reagan, I don't see it ever being overturned. Plus, it isn't that big of an issue anymore, people think abortion is a big hot button issue but few people care about it anymore it isn't an issue other than issue "enthusiasts".
- Economy. Obama is an outright big-government socialist, McCain at least gives lip service to capitalism although the republicans are just as socialist as the Democrats (I'm looking at Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac takeovers, AIG bailout, complete fiscal irresponsibility and out of control spending, etc.). Either way we are screwed.
On the running mates:
- Sarah Palin is exactly what Obama is -- inexperienced. But at least she has been a mayor of a town and governor of a state. While that makes her more qualified than Obama in my view, it still doesn't make her qualified to be in line for the presidency. I don't want her anywhere near the whitehouse. If McCain croakes, or if he doesn't run again in 2012, is she in? God help us.
- Joe Biden is pure scum, the poster child for everything that is wrong with a Washington DC politician. I still get douche chills from his performance during the Anita Hill hearings.
So, IMO they both suck but Obama is just plain dangerous. I will unenthusiastically vote for McCain and hope he doesn't die in office and Palin never gets to sit behind the big desk.