If nothing else, this election season has taught me one absolute truth: always take Sarah Palin’s advice.  So when it came to casting my vote today, what did I do?  Doggon’ it, I got all mavericky in that booth.  I voted for myself! Read more »

“Obama, Obama, Obama. All anybody ever talks about is Obama.”

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So, the two competing urban legends: all college students love Barack Obama, and Vandy is conservative (competing urban legend: “Vandy is more liberal than you think it is.”). Last week, I administered a political opinion poll for the Vanderbilt Hustler and InsideVandy.com that sent a survey to 590 randomly selected undergraduate students, 241 of whom responded. Here are the full results, but below’s a decent representation of what the data tells us:

• 43% self-identify as Republicans; 35% as Democrats; and 22% as independents which seems contrary to accepted perception of college students in general
• 55% support Barack Obama (including about 17% of Republicans, and about 70% of independents); 38% support McCain; 5% are undecided. Compare that to UPenn, where 81% of the undergraduates support Obama.
• 55% say they will vote by absentee ballot
• Sarah Palin is viewed “Very Unfavorably” by 45% of students (the other candidates all have a plurality of votes around 30-35% as “Favorable”).

A little more conservative than people argue? Perhaps. It would be interesting to have comparative data for how the political affiliations have changed over the past fifteen years as the school has risen in rankings. Also, it would have been awesome to have been doing this all fall to get read on how the campus was trending on the election. Blast!

ETA: I’ve always perceived the campus to be largely moderate with some leaning towards center-right; at the same time, 55% support for Obama is totally not surprising — even just given the t-shirts and buttons on campus this year. Neither political side has much to get worked up about at Vandy, basically.

Moments following the terrifying Obama logo in motion that concluded tonight’s look deep into the heartland of people who voted for Hillary Clinton, Mike and I headed off to the Torch office per usual to deride Barack Obama.

To the surprise of no one, the level of discourse in the comments on YouTube has been at its usual magnificent peak. It would have been so much better if they had just done the song.

A few additional thoughts on the spot:

Gallup says only about 4% of voters are truly undecided at this point, so the ad tonight functioned more as reinforcement, with shades of a GOTV. In that capacity, the rate of return here can’t be all that bad; Obama had the money to do something like this, and considering the high production values and message clearly tailored to middle class voters in the Rust Belt, the ad was successful in conveying several of Obama’s specific policy goals while maintaining positivity free from attacking McCain. We’ll know tomorrow how many people actually viewed it, but in the meantime, Obama succeeded in that pursuit Read more »

Bob Kerrey calls himself a hypocrite in today’s New York Post on public financing:

He settles on hypocrite. But then is all, “Hey, maybe, restrictions on political financing…aren’t good?” Which, yes, welcome to being a Republican with John McCain as your candidate. There’s nothing wrong with Obama buying the road block — just pretending like we got here because of his virtuous campaign. Campbell Brown, of the network who has denied the Obama Variety Hour, would like to remind you just why Obama denied public financing:

So Obama could form his own 527 machine! But how could anyone have known he was being insincere about his intentions what with this spellbinding beacon of sincerity:

Mickey Mouse can both give money, on credit, from multiple addresses, to the Obama campaign and vote for Barack Obama (as Mickey Miller probably), but whither the day he tries to attend a party for Barack Obama without producing a form of ID. With hat tips to Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades, here’s the information for the rave (which is now on WAIT LIST status):

Now, clearly, this is for security, and with all the crazies in the world, it’s for the best. But isn’t voting the most important thing in the history of the written word, as every spoken word, hand-jiving, t-shirt wearing, white backdrop, smarmy, two-minutes-too long, B-list celebrity Rock the Vote / MoveOn.org ad tells you? Surely, the security and integrity of an American electoral system that will probably produce a victorious Barack Obama is just as important as the security of just one party, right? God, no. And shame on you for even thinking it might be.

Katherine Miller is a junior at Vanderbilt University. She blogs daily at Right-Wing Vitriol.

The truth hurts, evidently, but McCain senior adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (who Mike and I literally yell whenever she’s on tv for her sheer stupidity and dumb haircut) shared the true divide between the counties of Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William and the rest of the state:

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     Do you remember, as a child, waking up from a terrifying nightmare in a cold sweat, unsure where you were and whether what you just experienced was actually real?  That feeling of utter terror, utter uncertainty… afraid of what might happen next.

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With a few sketchy reports about a very possible breach between McCain and Palin over how and how hard to attack Obama, Palin unleashed a flawlessly executed attack of a speech on abortion yesterday in Johnstown, PA. McCain seems totally incapable of putting together a functional, free market governing philosophy that differs fundamentally from Obama’s, and, given that the economy will dominate the national discourse for a long time, that renders him basically nonexistent as a candidate. He has to attack personally. Over at Hot Air, Allah Pundit referred to it as “one of the most red-meat social con speeches you’ll ever read.” While the campaign flails about (although the ACORN ad is an improvement), Palin has taken a sturdy, fundamental approach with four steps: Relate, Attack, Contextualize, Inspire (seasoned with blue-collar Dem political hat tips). Here’s the speech:

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Over at the Next Right, Sean Oxendine has McCain down to Sister Christian by 5.3 in Virginia; Real Clear has him down by 6.3 (with the comparison of Bush winning by 8.1 and 8.2 in 2000 and 2004, respectively), to which Kleinheider had this to say:

“I realize that northern Virginia is growing and different but I am just not convinced that McCain with his military background and Palin with her evangelicalism are gonna lose Virginia which RCP is giving Obama as a leaner, not a tossup.

“Call it a hunch. Call it whatever you like. But I just don’t think Obama wins Virginia or North Carolina in November. Things are bad in the economy but I don’t think they are that bad, not yet. I smell some Bradley Effect in that polling.”

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