It's a serious question. I'm very interested in the reasoning of people who make statements like that. I wonder, just how much worse would things have to get to make them change their minds?
I'm one of those "there's nothing Obama/Biden can say that would make me vote for them" folks. Why do I feel that way? These are my reasons and I'm just talking about Obama, so let's just pretend McCain doesn't exist right now. McCain has no effect on my opinion of Obama.
1) Obama has not accomplished anything of significance beyond getting nominated to run for President. I'm sorry but the "I've managed my campaign to run for President, therefore I'm qualified to be President" comment was ridiculous. I thought it was a joke from one of the late night commedians.
2) Obama has more "present" votes than he does yes/no votes. I see that as an unwillingness to stand for what he believes to be right because it might jeopardize his ambition to be President. That's not leadership, which is what I consider to be the President's job. In my opinion, the President should know where we have to go without any direct input from the masses, then he should chart a course there and convince us that it's the right thing to do. JFK said we're going to the moon and here's why. He didn't have a focus group tell him that a bunch of people thought it was a waste of money, he convinced us we had to do it and it would be worth the cost.
3) I don't trust anyone that came to national prominence through the Chicago political machine. Those are some of the most radical people in the country, and regardless of whether Obama believes what they believe, he has to take their calls.
4) He chose Joe Biden as his running mate. How can you possibly see that as congruent with his change message? That was old school party politicking. Obama says he's all about change, but if you look at who he surrounds himself with and the way his campaign is being run, it screams old style Tammany Hall politics.
5) I'm a libertarian, so every time Obama talks about the government getting into health insurance, and day care, low income housing, or anything else beyond interstate commerce, national security, and foreign policy he loses points with me. Anything else is something the states need to step up and handle.
All of the speeches and debates have very little effect because they're just words and frankly, I don't believe that anything a politician says can be taken at face value. It's a game where you pick some words and try to get the focus group to turn their response dials to the right position. You have to look at what a candidate has done in the past and see how their rhetoric compares to their actions. Obama sounds great when he talks - I remember being very impressed with him when he was elected as a Senator and thinking he was a new kind of politician. The problem is after the speeches, he doesn't actually do anything except work toward becoming President. That indicates to me that he isn't running for President because he needs the power to accomplish some goal, his end goal is to be the first black US President.
Sarah Palin is interesting to me but only because if McCain wins she will most likely get the party's nomination to run for President after his term. I'm probably going to vote libertarian this year because I live in Texas - my vote won't make one bit of difference to the republicans, but it could help the libertarians get enough votes to at least get their candidate into the debate next time.
-Colleen
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