Hi Tamar,

>Read what I said again. I said his fortitude (which certainly includes courage) is a plus. I do think missing those 5 years is a minus. Is it as large a negative as the fortitude is a positive? Probably not. As for his Congressional service, what I said is that it's not _by itself_ a qualification. It's what you do there. McCain certainly has some positives there, especially his willingness to work across the aisle. (Based on what the folks he served with in the Illinois legislature have to say, Obama has the same plus.)
>

I don't think his missing 5 years is a minus in this year, 2008. It would have made him a man out of time in the early 70's but there's been a lot of intervening time to allow him to catch up....

McCain has been instrumental in a lot of legislation in Washington, not all of which I liked, but he hasn't been a caretaker Congressman or Senator. Obama....hasn't done doo diddly in 3 years in the Senate and I really don't care what he did in the Illinois legislature since it's small potatoes.

>>Meanwhile, Mr. Hope and Change, with practically ZERO experience in any area needed for a leader captures your imagination.
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>What invigorates me most about Obama is his obvious intelligence and his apparent willingness to listen to new evidence and change his mind based on it. After the current administration, I consider that an absolute necessity.

Sure, he's intelligent and well-spoken. But if he's so willing to reach across the aisle and be bipartisan, why is he ranked as the most liberal and least bipartisan Senator?

>As for issues, frankly, Obama's a little conservative for me, but McCain is way too conservative for me. Unlike Mike, I didn't consider him a good alternative in 2000 (though he was certainly a better choice than GWB) and don't consider him a good option now.
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>I'll be honest here and say that there wasn't a Republican running this year that I would have comfortably voted for in the general. Anybody here who's supporting McCain willing to say the reverse--that no matter who the Democratic nominee was (from the group that was running), they wouldn't have voted for him/her?

Obama is too conservative for you?? Wow. Sorry that Che Guevara isn't available to run :-)

Your honesty is appreciated and I can understand your position based on your politics. I don't think McCain supporters are as cut and dried. First off, I see no one here who is an enthusiastic McCain supporter; rather, I see a bunch of conservatives and GOPers wishing they had a better choice and holding their collective noses. Obama is the most liberal of the starting seven of Dems, being behind only Dennis Kucinich.

The problem for non-Democrats is that the Democrats were so polarized against everything GOP for so many years that there's no way a candidate remotely palatable to the GOP was going to be nominated. Personally, I may have voted for Bill Richardson. But he was toast in the process because he wasn't liberal enough to be nominated.

I could be wrong, Tamar, but I really think that the election will boil down to what the predominant political philosophy is now. I really don't believe that Obama's "hope and change" will appeal to Republicans in the least so I don't expect a lot of crossover GOP votes. OTOH, does McCain still have traction to moderate and conservative Dems? Dunno that either.