While I am less hesitant in my support of Obama, I echo your concerns on his portrayel of global trade as a zero sum game. On bailing out the domestic auto industry, I am not sure how he would go about doing so anyway, unless he does in fact promote policies that move alternative fuel vehicles forward. I'm ok with that if he moves away from corn ethanol (McCain is right on that one).

Of course you are now just like the rest of us librul academics in our ivory towers.

It hasn't been the Sarah Palin, populist wing of the Republican party at the helm in the last eight years. It has been the open-borders, invade the world, free trade at all costs wing. Now as the Republican party reaps the whirlwind these people have sewn, they act like children who have broken a cookie jar. "Uh, uh, its sister Sarah, she did it!" Yeah, right.

I agree with you on McCain, but I can't support Obama; the fact that he's both anti-trade and plans on raising taxes on small businesses heading into a major recession should terrify just about everyone. Obama seems determined to repeat the mistakes of Herbert Hoover.

I'm a Dem and just not voting for President this year.

Going for Obama also. I'm not sure I'm that worried about the trade policies because I think we really don't know what policies the Obama administration will follow at this point. I think the financial mess has thrown things wide open. I also think Obama is smart enough to listen to economists, and economists will be reminding him of the effects Smoot-Hawley had. On trade I'm more worried about congress than about what Obama may do. He's going to have bigger fish to fry than trade for at least 2 year and possibly the entire first term. What I'm thinking is that Obama is going to be driving a 'New Deal' for the first year or so, which may mean we don't have to worry about congress-driven trade bills for a while at last.

Let's remember what we voted for in 2000 - and what we got because of 9/11. More or less the opposite.

At least this year we already know what the spoiler crisis is going to be for Obama - "it's the economy, stupid!"

McCain - Palin is unelectable this year - so it has to be Obama.

"Let the GOP have its comeuppance and come back under new management."

And in the meantime allow the taxpayers to be royally screwed for at least three years? Allow the most disastrous anti-business administration since Jimmy Carter? Accelerate the economic woes of the world rather than alleviate them?

You believe too much of what others tell you and not enough of what your own eyes see. I will happily cancel your vote this year with my own.

I hope, at least, you're voting yes on question 1.

Damn it, Useless. I know what I'm going to say here is, well, useless, but I've got to say it:

Where have you been for the past 8 years? Obama's not going to have time to steal all your money and socialize your womenfolk because he'll be too busy taking fire from the right as he tries to clean up the foreign and domestic policy disasters left over from the Bush years.

I am not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination (in fact, I self identified as a conservative when it came to foreign policy until the GOP and the Democrats decided to trade portfolios) but prioritizing ideology and political gain over competent governing is--to my mind at least--morally reprehensible.

I don't have any faith in McCain's ability to exercise strategic restraint nor in his ability to govern at home, and the Sarah Palin pick did nothing to convince me otherwise.

Also, that's not how voting works.

essentially reasonable avowal I suppose - although asking the GOP to pay for economic woes that are at the very least bipartisan seems somewhat bilious - still I do wonder why people feel compelled to choose a side when neither side is worth choosing - what's the point of that? I hope Dan you're just not trying to hedge, ie you have little confidence in Obama but because he's obviously going to win you sort of endorse him just in case he turns out to be not so bad after all. That'd be a silly reason to vote for someone. Much better that you're doing it out of spite viz the most execrable Palin. Good healthy emotion spite.

Speaking of your Palin hatred - have you or anyone looked into the reason why she had the test done to check for birth defects when she had no intention of getting an abortion? Has anyone bothered to look into fact that the test itself increases the chance of miscarriage? A little curious that.

Shocker. Drezner voted for Kerry, now Obama. The only question is why he calls himself a Republican? He clearly isn't, and should just admit as much.

"A plague on both your houses", etc, etc.

Not that I disagree. But you are voting in Massachusetts, right? Not like there was any doubt where that one would go.

Me? I'm still registered in Colorado. That one might be more interesting.

I am voting for Obama. And like Dan, I'm not liking it much. But McCain is a guy who goes for the dramatic action, straight from his gut, even if drama is unecessary or counterproductive. We've had eight years of that. Don't need four more.

But, rather surprisingly, we have an active senate race here in Georgia, and I am going to vote Republican in that. Not because I like Congressional Republicans particularly well (Terry Schaivo, anyone?), but because I do not trust the Dems with a filibuster proof senate.

I have voted the Dem presidential ticket my whole voting life, though I have always placed myself much closer to the DLC line of thought (shading to the right on economic issues, fairly far to the left on social issues, muddled on foreign policy) than the Gephardt/Pelosi wing.

Therefore, my support of Obama is somewhat tough, as I worry about his trade policies and hope that his economic populism is mostly campaign talk (I believe that he is non-ideological enough to to surround himself with a catholic set of advisors and wise enough to choose well from their varying advice). However, I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd be able to vote for 2008 McCain (2000 McCain would have been somewhat easier to accept).

All that being said, I'm with Appalled Moderate, and, were I fortunate enough to live in a place that had voting representation in Congress (damn DC), I would be voting for any non-socially conservative GOP candidate I could find. I trust Obama. I don't trust a Dem-dominated Congress that would prevent him from (as Clinton did) using GOP congressional votes as leverage to get through necessary, reasonable legislation.

As much as Dan and other academics (e.g. Steve Taylor) love to bash Palin, I have to call a reality check on this one. McCain appears he'll perform about as bad in this election as prediction models said he would (as I read on some blog somewhere, http://danieldrezner.com/blog/?p=3860). So while she may not have been ideal, Palin hardly brought down the McCain campaign. He really didn't need any help with that.

I'm not Dan Drezner, just so we're clear on that. Professor, could you please consider a name change so I don't have to keep bringing this up? Get right on it, OK?

I may sit this one out, just vote for the down-ticket positions. I have been very open to persuasion about Obama and rooted for him in the primaries, but as time goes on I wonder.

"Everybody says" Obama is smart, flexible, works across the aisle, great judgment, etc. But evidence supporting that is not to be had, he has no track record, and really no critical examination.

The cult of Obama thing is creepy and undemocratic; he avoids press conferences; has plenty of shady Chicago connections, and is not a "process" reformer, just a "reformer". That sounds exactly like a rigid ideologue seeking to appear reasonable prior to election. Holding fast to Iraq positions in changing circumstances reinforces it.

McCain is a known quantity, unfortunately. Obama is superficially more appealing, but get below that superficiality and he is even more unpredictable than old John, and consequently an even bigger risk.

It's a shame we have to choose between two Senators, that is a dubious pool from which to pluck executive talent at a turbulent, challenging moment in our history.

Dan, all your loyal readers knew this was coming. I'm also with you, with a hope against all evidence that Obama's problems with trade are less of a disaster than they appear. I've got a lot of problems with how globalization has unfolded, but on balance, I really believe it helped add 1 billion people to the middle-class, and has helped make a slightly more tolerant, humane, and "liberal" world. I'd rather not see that threatened, and Obama does have something of an economic nationalist streak. I hope that kind of ideology doesn't get much traction because it is a slippery slope. Replaying the world view of the 1930's, this time with nukes and biotech, seems like a bad idea.

At any rate, my respect for John McCain evaporated in the past several weeks, and my respect of Republicans in office has done so for the past several years. I really believe in something called competence, and the Republicans, and especially McCain and his campaign have a very clear deficit in this crucial characteristic.

In contrast, if Obama governs half as well as he runs a campaign, we'll be in much better shape in 4 years.

Epic failure. Just sad.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDc0MTliOWVmMTIzMGM5ODU5NWI3NmFmOTgyMzQwMDk=

Though I have no time at the moment to give this subject the treatment it deserves, I'll throw out the observation that, for me, Republican party loyalty has looked like a one-way street for about 20 years. Unlike Dan, I voted for Bush twice, and worked on a couple of GOP campaigns down the ballot. There are financial stocks that have offered a better return on investment in the last month than I've gotten from the GOP recently, in terms of what the government does and how it does it. Appeals to party loyalty are best directed at someone else this year.

#5: "And in the meantime allow the taxpayers to be royally screwed for at least three years? Allow the most disastrous anti-business administration since Jimmy Carter? Accelerate the economic woes of the world rather than alleviate them?"

Maybe. I think there are more small-government conservatives in the Democratic Party than you think. I think Obama is likely to win by a smaller margin than the polls now say because there are a lot of people who want change but not to give him a mandate.

If we get Jimmy Carter II that will be the best news for the GOP since 2000 at least. Remember how screwed the GOP was in 1976? Four years later they'd healed a whole lot, and it wasn't because people were sold on Reagan, not in 1980 they weren't.

I think that every generation the society needs a good reminder of what socialism means.

In retropect there are elections you want to lose. 1976 was one of them, and 2008 is another I think. We're headed into a recession and probably a slow-go recovery. There is still a lot of bad news on the mortgage front to work through, and the 'cure' for the banking crisis is going to have some bad side-effects. It's a crappy an economic situation as the US has had since 'stagflation' days. Foreign policy isn't going to be great news either. Iran will probably get the bomb; Obama's charm offensive ain't gonna work on them. He'll have the choice of starting a mjor war which makes Iraq look like kiddie-time by comparison, and he'll blink. There will be other cool surprises I'm sure.

With the Democrats completely in the driver's seat they will take the blame. Can you visualize Guliani running as a second Reagan, with "Let's get the country moving again" as his slogan? I surely can....

#17: "Republican party loyalty has looked like a one-way street for about 20 years."

Zathras, I might modify the timetable slightly on that. Bush pere wasn't a populist but he did clean up the S&L mess, and I thought the Gingrich revolution was worth doing, so for me the turning point was probably 1996 rather than 1988. But once the media and democratic muckrakers destroyed the heart of the 1994 revolution we were left with betrayal. DeLay, Abramoff, and Bush have not been good for the conservative middle class. My income took a big hit in 2001 and hasn't recovered, so for me it's been a recession for almost a decade. It's enough to drive a man to drink - and to vote for Obama.

DS:

Please...no resurgent Giuliani. Really, we need a new wave of Republicans, probably from the governors ranks, and probably not from the South.

The only reason McCain looks 80 to you is that your are young. I am 74 and McCain looks like he is 69 viewed from my perspective.

AM: I liked Guliani before his makeover for the 2008 campaign. I suspect his earlier persona is a better fit for the period we're about to enter.

I'd also consider Romney except for two grave defects. He has no personality and he looks like he's had a few too many facelifts, because he has no laugh lines and little apparent personality. Also, businessmen aren't exactly on my best-liked list right now.

Republicans traditionally nominate men who have been through the mill once or twice before. I like governors, but let's not forget what happened the last time the GOP elected a one-term governor who had no national exposure before his first presidential election. The incumbent I mean. And he hasn't been a raging success, has he?

Huckabuck is out of the question unless we want to repeat the Great Alf Landon. So Rudy G it is. Maybe.

One more point of 'hope' for the GOP:

"Next Victim of Turmoil May Be Your Salary"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/business/economy/15leonhardt.html?ref=business

Sounds lousy, doesn't it? But....

"Already, median pay today is slightly lower than it was in 2000, and by 2010, could end up more than 5 percent lower than its old peak."

"When incomes stagnate, as they did in the early ’80s, early ’90s and in the last several years, people get worried about the state of the country."

The message is that we already have had bad news for several years - and it's about to get worse, with another 5% drop forecast and the worst drop in consumer spending for 30 years if not since the 30's.

Let's see.... Which party is going to be in power to accept credit for these heartening developments? We've had a Democratic congress since 1986, now add President Obama to the mix. They might be able to stick Bush with the blame for a couple years, but by 2012 the Democrats will have been in power for 6 years (and the GOP largely out of the public eye for 4 years).

All hope may not quite be lost, gentlepeople.

My instinct is that Dan is being a little unfair to John McCain, who can become interested in a wide variety of issues very quickly and, if removed from the pressure the campaign environment imposes to come up with an instant reaction to everything, would make better decisions than most people credit him for now.

But my instinct is one of the things I have left over from 2000, when McCain was eight years younger and George Bush had not served two terms in the White House. The latter condition is important because things are worse now, pretty much across the board and in large part because George Bush has served two terms in the White House.

But as far as McCain personally is concerned, the first condition is important, too. I've felt since he started his current campaign for the Presidency that McCain is just too old to serve effectively for four years. Twice in the recent past men in their seventies have gotten Presidential nominations, Reagan in 1984 and Robert Dole in 1996 (by coincidence, both men had had the effects of serious injuries as well as those of advancing age to contend with, as McCain does also). I had a front row seat for Reagan's second term, in which his already limited appetite for engagement in the details of government was imposed on further by his declining energy and helped dissipate the momentum of his administration. Of Dole, we know now that had he been elected he would have been dogged by health issues by the end of his first term, and incapacitated if elected to a second. Leaving aside that McCain's immediate male ancestors dropped dead from heart attacks when they were younger than he is now, that's enough experience for me. I'd feel that way even if he hadn't put that ignorant woman in position to succeed him.

McCain has chosen to run this year as a Bush Republican, which is the major thing I have against him. The age issue is one I'd raise against anyone aspiring to the Presidency in his seventies -- intending no disrespect, since I hope to be in my seventies myself someday, but the Presidency is a uniquely demanding job and not one to step into for the first time at McCain's age.

Dan,

I feel like I am the reverse of you in that I am a moderate Democrat who, completely unsurprised that Bush made a hash of things, finds himself thinking that the Obama "cure" is worse than the disease.

First, what I think you're missing is that the Republican Party is already under new management, namely, McCain's. He is as much a repudiation of the worst aspects of Bushism as the party was capable of nominating at this time.

Just so I'm not being ambiguous, I would regard those worst elements of Bush as being:

1. His absolute inability to face bad news, and to communicate such news effectively to the American people in the manner necessary to get them behind difficult but necessary measures designed to address the problem at hand.

2. His completely profligate big-spending ways, exemplified by the Medicare Prescription drug benefit (which McCain properly voted against, and Obama believes didn't go far enough).

3. Even in the aftermath of 9/11, no willingness on Bush's part to change our oil-dependent ways through, oh, a gasoline tax that could easily have been sold as a patriotic part of the war effort.

4. His countenance of torture, which in addition to being immoral is simply ineffective as a means of gathering actionable intelligence.

McCain was on the right side of all these issues, especially challenging Bush on his endorsement of torture, but unlike the Democrats he never gave up on the war in Iraq even when it was at its worst due to Bush and Rumsfeld's feckless mismanagement thereof.

If my party, the Democratic Party, had put up a moderate candidate (NOT Hillary -- my view is "no more Bushes, no more Clintons") who favored winning the war in Iraq, who favored a measured reform of entitlement spending, and who favored a real (ie, including nuclear) approach to de-carbonizing our energy sources, this would have been an easy slam-dunk for me.

But my party has instead nominated a talented, intelligent politician in Barack Obama who, sadly, has chosen as his main allies in Chicago those who are corrupt (Mayor Daley, Tony Rezko, Gov. Blagojevich) or radical (Ayers, Rev. Wright) or both (ACORN).

Through Obama, my party has turned its back on free trade, has turned its back on any notion of fiscal discipline or entitlement reform, and indeed has turned its back on the notion of winning in Iraq as opposed to merely withdrawing from the fight while it was still in progress. We did that once before, to South Vietnam, and it was far more disastrous for ordinary South Vietnamese than it was for us Americans.

Yes, Bush has proven disastrous. But I fear Obama as a cure will prove as disastrous an antidote to Bush, as Carter was an antidote in 1976 to the manifest evils of Richard Nixon.

I would much rather elect a McCain who repudiates the many insanities of the Republican Party, than elect an Obama who merely confirms and reinforces all the old far left inanities that have again taken control of my Democratic Party.

Lastly, even with a President McCain, there will be a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress blocking any residual Republican idiocy. With a President Obama, however, there will be no brakes whatsoever on an ultra-liberal-palooza. Just look at Bush and the Republicans in control of everything from 2002-2006 for how well that works out.

It should be kept in mind that the members of Congress who voted against Gerald Ford's final request to provide aid to South Vietnam included Barry Goldwater and Scoop Jackson. By then, the hopelessness of that endeavor was painfully obvious.