The Observation Deck

Jim DeVito wrote:I fail to see how them being there is going to solve anything. I think the best thing they can do right now is to have a debate. The whole process is getting old and lame.

Let me offer you a little bit of insight into this maneuver (it is brilliant, by the way).

You see, most of McCain's money lies with the RNC. If McCain suspends his campaign, the ads still go on because he isn't paying for them directly, so in effect, he will still be campaigning.

On the other side of the fence, Obama holds most of his money, not the DNC, so if he suspends his campaign, then the ads stop and he stops campaigning which will cut his lead over McCain that was just announced in the polls.

The economic situation is what has caused the spread in the polls. People see the Republicans as being responsible for the economic crisis and McCain is behind the proverbial 8 ball on this one. He has got to do something drastic and do it quickly if he wants to avoid a downhill slide that he probably can't recover from before Nov 4th.

Now, for my personal opinion. Both of them should be there doing their jobs and they should have been there on and off as much as they could while running their campaigns. McCain hasn't voted in the Senate since April, including on the recent bailout. Obama has also been absent a lot, although he has been present to vote since April. They need to do their jobs at hand as well as run their presidential campaigns but they also shouldn't use political grandstanding to avoid showing up to a debate they agreed to participate in. Its not that McCain will be so vital to the process of hammering out an agreement on the bailout that he will be too busy to show up to the debate, its that he doesn't have a great track record of performing in a free-form symposium and a poor performance there could cause the poll numbers to go south on him even more.

David Lay wrote:So how does McCain cast his votes...does he phone it in?

Jeff Dreger wrote:Stephen:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/cong ... s/m000303/

at least Obama puts a link to his voting record right on his main page... I assume the point was that he's missed recent votes (just like McCain) - hard to tell from such a verbose post


so can't McCain multitask? when he's president and something like this comes up will he be asking Russia to stop pestering him cuz he's busy?

at least Obama puts a link to his voting record right on his main page..

Stephen Eisel wrote:http://obama.senate.gov/votes/

Valerie Molinski wrote:

Stephen Eisel wrote:http://obama.senate.gov/votes/

Steven, I dont know if that link was directed at me but in the post above, it WAS recognized that Obama has been absent too for a lot of votes. No one was picking on yer boy here...