Oh Obama! and really, McCain?

[plumapen]

Obama's historic speech last night was absolutely fabulous, hitting all the right notes, putting specifics to his promises. And as to the question of Hillary supporters backing him, I think he answered those questions in trumps last night. To my mind, there should not be any more hold outs, but I suppose die-hards and those who refuse to admit

Comments

[mauvaise_etoile]

Ugh, I totally forgot to TiVo it last night. :/ I'll have to catch the highlights on The Daily Show lol.

As far as Sarah Palin, as I just commented on Star's LJ - ugh. I'm totally disgusted by this. But yes, agree that he shot himself in his own foot my selecting her. They were seriously desperate.

[plumapen]

Link's up in the post if you want to watch it in full (which I highly recommend; it's a FAB speech).

[norus]

Good news: the Beeb election coverage is pretty reasonable actually; and it might be nice to get some real unbiased coverage rather than some of the histrionics you get on US TV networks... (then again, you might not see it like that if it's actually your country; they cover it about as well as they do the UK general elections but those aren't as emotive for us as the US elections seem to be for you guys).

[plumapen]

That's good to know, thanks

[norus]

Whether you already know this or whether it applies to US elections, I don't know; but for the BBC one of the conditions of the licence fee is that they have to do balanced coverage (at least for the British elections). It's policed and enforced, although I'm sure there are subtle ways of putting in bias that can't be proven in that sort of situation.

I didn't mean the conferences, I've never wanted to watch that sort of thing (all hype as far as it looks from over here). I just don't think I've ever seen Brits getting as excited about who's the leader of the Conservative Party (and therefore as likely to be the next PM as Obama is to be president)... does that make sense?

[plumapen]

Mmhm, that's makes total sense. We don't have the license fee over here so networks can do what they please, really. Most try to keep to the ethical standards of professional journalism (at least outwardly) but it can be something of a crapshoot if you're not informed yourself and know how to spot bias.

My understanding of British elections is that you elect the party and then the party chooses the PM, yes? If so, yeah, I'm not sure I'd get very excited either since it seems a step removed from the voters; does that seem that way to you? do you think that accounts for the excitement difference? I suppose the same argument of removal could be made here with the electoral college (now there's a kettle of fish!).

[norus]

Er, you vote for your local MP. The leader of the party which has the most MPs gets to be PM. So... sort of. The thing that happened with Gordon Brown becoming PM was a bit underhanded and most people aren't pleased about it, although of course it's completely legit. Generally speaking you know in advance who the leaders of the parties are so you know who you're voting for, and broadly speaking it's a bit like the electoral college in that one guy can have more votes overall but lose the election due to boundaries etc - but at least lines are drawn by areas of equal population rather than allocating more college votes, so one seat = one MP, you can never have a swing of 50-something college votes on one normal ballot paper like you could in the US.

...I'm not sure I'm actually on the point any more but, hmm.

[plumapen]

Ah ok. Yeah the electoral college is supposed to be equal to congressional representation, so barring the two votes equal to the Senate, the rest are ostensibly based on population.

Anywho, yippee for BBC news election coverage! God help us all if McCain wins.