Yep -- you said what I was going to. Bush fought dirtier. In South Carolina, his people put out flyers accusing McCain of having a "black baby" (if I am not mistaken, it was an indian child he and his wife had adopted), and criticized his war record (something Bush did to Kerry and Cleland -- note that all the people he criticized for their war records were actually wounded in war while Bush skipped his National Guard duty).

Bottom line lesson to learn from the past 8 years: sleaziness, cheating, and dishonesty will get you elected faster than the opposite.

My god, it's amazing how you can twist around things to support your guy!

The war was wrong, so the coward who stayed home is the hero while the guy who volunteered and went to fight his country is the villain?

No wonder Bush got re-elected when people can ignore logic like that. Whew, doesn't it hurt?

Besides, a future President is supposed to have more balls than 99% of the population, so that argument is silly.

I didnt look through the messages but I could of sworn that the Bush campaign had a smear campaign against McCain in 2000. I think a big deal was made when the Bush Campaign made a big deal out of McCain having a bangladesh kid out of wedlock but in fact he was adopted

The answer is easy: McCain, while popular with Democrats and independents (at least they claim they like him ;-)), is not so hot with the Republican base and nowadays it's very powerful. Last year a similar situation happened in Pennsylvania, where the Senior Senator Arlyn Spector almost lost his primary race to a right-wing Republican Pat Toomey, even though both president Bush and the junior senator Rick santorum publicly backed Spector.

True too. One of the culprits is also the way we nominate people. Basically, only those who are really interested in politics get involved in the primaries, and the more interested you are in politics, the more likely you are to be farther to the left or right than everyone else. So the right wing controls the Republican primaries and the left does the Democratic one. So instead of getting centrist candidates who can best win over the whole country, we get extreme candidates and very close elections.

I'm sure if McCain had run against Gore in 2000, he would have received more votes and there wouldn't have been the whole election fiasco.

When did democrats vote in an extreme left candidate in primaries recently? I wish.

They didn't go with Lieberman, did they?

Well, the democrats are not as far to the left as the republicans are to the right, that's for sure!

I think what happened last year was that the democrats started to like a candidate who seemed more liberal (Dean) but then got scared and nominated a more centrist candidate (Kerry) instead. As I said in threads back then, I thought Dean would have made the best President, but I was supporting Edwards because I thought he had the best chance of beating Bush.

They didn't vote for Mosley Braun either :wink:

Dean would've been a better president than Kerry, for sure. At least he wasn't afraid of yelling, even when all the polls clearly indicated that he shouldn't

Kidding aside, if it had to be a Democrat, Dean would've been my choice.

A black woman? Puhh-leeze. Only the Republicans can get away with such a nomination

Thanks for your oppinions, folks.

Hopefully your current president, or at least the new one in a few years, will be able to bring all of these problems to a good end for all involved.

By all means, with McCain there is at least one candidate you really could trust, that's what I think.

I'd rather Arizona's other famous Senator were able to run. Barry Goldwater. I wish I was alive in '64 to vote for him.

BTW, can someone explain to me why McCain is such a moderate? What "moderate" (read: pussy. I mean this applied to both Dems and GOP) policies does he espouse?

Actually Kidrock, I agree with you he's not a moderate at all. I remember some people saying Kerry should take him as a running mate to bridge the partisan gap and I slapped myself silly.

Still there's more than one way to be very conservative, I'd prefer his way to the current guy.

McCain is very conservative; the difference between him and many other conservatives is that he has his principles because they are his principles and not simply because they will help get him elected. He's honest and disagrees with a lot of the crap the administration does which is not conservative and which in many ways is just not very ethical.