Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Summer Vacation

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

For a lot of people, it's a good time to take a break. It's been a long year.

One group not going on vacation is that group of Americans earning less than $27,000/year. They're not going because, face it, they can't afford it. 1,350 of them were recently polled, by land line AND cell phone, and split 47 - 37 for Obama. This demographic group makes up 25% of adult Americans. While there was a split amoung whites (and a lot of undecideds), it was different for blacks and Hispanics:

"Among the African Americans polled, 92 percent chose Obama as the candidate more concerned with their problems; not a single black respondent said so about McCain, although 1 percent said "both do." Hispanics also sided with Obama on that question, favoring him by more than 40 percentage points as the more empathetic candidate."
One group that now is on vacation is the US Congress. Well, to be honest, not ALL of them have left. Some of the House Republicans are still there, railing at the wind to get Congress back in session to vote on off-shore drilling. High unemployment, high gas prices, lack of health care, lack of jobs, and instead of being back in their districts talking to voters about solutions, they're grasping at straws:
"Rep. Donald A. Manzullo (R-Ill.), one of the stars of Friday’s session, launched into a long soliloquy on John Quincy Adams, likening his fight against slavery to the controversy over an offshore drilling vote. In an interview afterwards, Manzullo referred to the Middle Ages and the rise of the West as justification for a floor vote on offshore drilling."
They're not planning on leaving soon.

Also not-on-vacation is Hillary Clinton, who will be campaigning for Barack Obama this Friday in Nevada.

Trying to do his job was reporter Stephen Price of the Tallahassee Democrat. (It's the paper, not the party.) He was at a Florida McCain event, and was ousted by McCain security. Oddly, he was the only African-American at the rally. The campaign told him he had to leave because he was in the area reserved for national reporters, and he is a state reporter. There were no national reporters there. HHHMMM

Also still working is Dick Wadhams:
"Long-suffering Colorado Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer suffered another setback Saturday when his campaign manager Dick Wadhams – who earned national fame for guiding former Senator George Allen from a presidential frontrunner to a national laughingstock – suffered his own “macaca meltdown,” telling Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News, “We're going to shove a bunch of 30-second ads up his a** on this issue over the course of the campaign.” Wadhams’ bizarre, vulgar outburst came in response to Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall voting against a Congressional adjournment – as he had pledged to do, and, oddly, how Schaffer himself had urged. There was no immediate response from the many conservative organizations with ties to Schaffer who have long decried a breakdown in the country’s morality."
Are you working?