Dick Gephardt for Vice President?

I have to admit, the prospect of having Dick Gephardt run for barnacle Vice President is an interesting prospect.  One may recall that he was booted as leader of the Democrats in the House until after GOP Congressional gains in 2002.

His strengths are initially obvious: his very strong labor-union ties would immediately relieve any doubts labor unions may still have with Obama.

He might also help Obama in Missouri – one of the few swing states that McCain is widening his lead in – as well as helping to take Iowa off the map.

He would also give Obama some of the experience that Obama will be criticized for not having, and being a Clinton supporter, Gephardt may help bring over many of the remaining Clinton supporters who have resisted siding with Obama.

Also, apparently the GOP fears him being on the ticket.

He has a few negatives though, too:

First off, his age.  He’s only 5 years older than McCain, which means that if Obama was President for two terms, Gephardt would be 75 in 2016 if he wanted to run for President.  That means choosing Gephardt wouldn’t give Obama a guaranteed successor, unless Obama switched horses in 2012.

Second, some Deaniacs – who were largely behind Obama in the primary – may be irked by that, since Gephardt was the main attack dog against Dean in Iowa in 2004 which pretty much ended both of their campaigns for President that year.

Third, he voted for the Iraq AUMF, and some Obama supporters insist that Obama pick a running mate who was also against the war from the start.

The good thing is that the last two negatives are more within the democratic party, which shouldn’t be all that much of a deal, and the first seems like less of a concern for a Vice President than it would be a President (people didn’t seem too concerned about Cheney’s health in 2000 or 2004 after all).

In the end, I’ll be surprised if Obama were to pick Gephardt, but It’s an interesting possibility, anyway.

McCain’s Temper

It looks like more evidence of McCain’s famous temper has appeared:

One of John McCain’s Republican colleagues says he saw the presumed GOP presidential nominee roughly grab an associate of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and lift him out of his chair during a diplomatic mission to the Central American nation in 1987.

This is, of course, on the heels of the report of McCain getting “visibly angry” when a reporter asked him how the Vietnam War makes him qualified to be President.  All this despite the fact that McCain himself said in 1999:

“The question I ask myself every morning while shaving in front of the mirror is: ‘Okay, John, you’re an incredible war hero, an inspiration to all Americans. But what qualifies you to be president of the United States?’ “

Or is the McCain camp going to keep blowing off McCain’s temper problems (which have been reported by numerous Senators and others) and, in the process, possibly calling McCain’s fellow GOP Senator Thad Cochran a liar, and keep crying about people like Clark saying things which don’t even go as far as what McCain himself has said about himself?

Schizophrenic Florida

Look at these poll results in the past month from Florida:

Quinnipiac (June 9-16): Obama by 4% (+/- 2.6%)

ARG (June 13-17): Obama by 5% (+/- ~4%)

Rasmussen (June 18): McCain by 8% (+/- 4.5%)

Rasmussen (June 26): McCain by 7% (+/- 4.5%)

PPP (June 26-29): Obama by 2% (+/- 3.6%)

Strategic Vision (June 27-29): McCain by 8% (+/- 3%)

If you apply the MoE to both numbers in the poll, only the Strategic Vision poll has a result outside of the margin.  However, the larger point is this: polls are all over the place, and we even had two polls going on at virtually the same time – PPP and Strategic Vision – who came up with results 10% different in margin.

The best explanation people have come up for this is a difference in methodology (Rasmussen and Strategic Vision using traditional party ID numbers, while ARG, PPP, and Quinnipiac use floating or otherwise new party ID numbers).  However, I’m not sure if methodology can fully explain this since we don’t seem to see such a swing in other states either.  Granted, few other states have had so many polls in a month’s time, but to have a swing of 13% between Obama’s best poll and McCain’s best poll seems a little much.

It’d be nice to see a poll here from yet another party, such as Mason-Dixon or Survey USA (or even one of the big media companies) to tell us what they think.

Washington Post: Morons

This has been flying around today, but the Washington Post, trying to create a scandal where there is none, tried to claim that Barack Obama somehow got a “special deal” on a mortage loan in 2005:

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a “super super jumbo.” Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama’s rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

…

He secured his final mortgage commitment on June 8, 2005, and during that week, rates on similar loans for which information is available averaged 5.93 percent, according to HSH Associates, which surveys lenders. Another survey firm, Bankrate.com, placed the average at 6 percent.

Now, Obama’s explanation for this? Competition (aren’t republicans supposed to like that?):

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors.

What possible “other factors” could result in Obama getting a lower interest rate? fivethirtyeight.com has a good guess:

So Obama’s rate was 30 basis points better than the average. However, the amount of the loan and the nature of the property are not the only factors that determine a mortgage rate. Another major consideration is the creditworthiness of the borrower. According to current rate quotes from myFICO.com, a borrower with very good credit can expect a mortgage rate about 30 basis points better than someone with pretty good credit, and a borrower with excellent credit can expect about a 50 basis point discount.

As FiveThirtyEight explains, there is every reason to believe how Obama could have had a very good or excellent credit score (namely he had no credit card debt and was making a lot of money from his books, among other things).

So now, just like the Wes Clark bru-ha-ha, the media fails to use it’s brain or basic common sense or deduction skills to try to create a controversy where none really is.  And the media favors Obama?