My Debate BINGO cards.

This is something I'm going to do to keep myself entertained during tomorrow's Presidential debate. The momentum all seems to be headed in Senator Obama's direction. I'm about 75% sure he'll win at this point, barring something good happening economically for a change or McCain being able to jump-start his campaign again. This doesn't look like it will happen given the recent focus on Bill Ayers, a strategy which seems very likely to back-fire. I'm also sure there will be nothing new revealed to me about either candidate. (I've listened to them, researched their voting records, read all of their books, etc.) I've decided to keep the debate interesting by playing debate-BINGO. So I've made a card for 16 of each candidate's most overused phrases and will check off a square each time they say one. I'm interested to see who fills their card first.

These are McCain's:
1)"maverick"- This one was used up a long time ago.
2)"naive"- I will count it if he says "naivete" as well.
3) "surge"- This one of course will only count if used with regard to Iraq.
4) "General Petraus"
5) "clean coal"- I'm going to confess here. I have no idea what the difference is.
6)"voted against funding the troops"- This one won't have to be word for word. If the first three are used, but with some other term for our armed forces, I'll still count it.
7) "reached across the aisle"- I like it when he uses this phrase because I can always hear teeth grinding to the right of me.
8) "on the job training"- Because he doesn't need it, and the other guy probably does, get it?
9) "country first"
10) "earmark"- I'm actually going to do a word-count on this one.
11) "nuclear"- How cool is it to actually have a Republican candidate that can pronounce this word? It's been a while.
12) "reform"- Another one I will be keeping a word-count on.
13) "my friends"- I kind of like this one actually. Makes him seem like a really bad-ass version of Mr. Rogers.
14)"liberal"- People on the right say this word with as much scorn as people on the left say the word "oil".
15) "experience"- Hey, why not? If you look at the last 50 years, the less experienced guy hardly ever wins .
16) "second highest corporate tax rate in the world" -Did you know the United States has... well, I guess you do now.


Now for Obama.
1) "change"- This one was so obvious I almost left it out. I will do a word count on this one, only counting it if it appears more than 5 times.
2) "hard-working Americans"- This is my current least favorite political cliche'. It has replaced the terms "middle-class" and "working poor" which actually, you know, meant something.
3) "failed policies of the last 8 years"-This is the phrase that will most likely carry him to the big 270. I will also be keeping a word-count on this one
4) "tough diplomacy"- This one is so vague as to be absolutely meaningless, but people seem to be buying it. I see saying that you'll "use diplomacy" to solve the Iran crisis as being about as helpful as saying you'll "use economics" to solve the mortgage crisis.
5) "from the bottom up"
6) "3rd term"- No need to re-invent the wheel here, just keep running against Bush.
7) "top 1%" -An evil group of people, aside from Hollywood celebrities and Warren Buffett.
8) "green jobs" - We will also accept "5 million new jobs". Hey why not promise 10 million? or 100 million? People who believe government creates wealth, rather than just moving it around will probably be even more impressed.
9) "ethics reform"- At which point I will laugh. A searchable database to see all the ways our money is being pissed away? How did the Republic survive so long without this guy?
10) "Dick Lugar"
11) "hurting"- as in "people are hurting" or "hard-working Americans are hurting"
12) "corporate greed"
13) "regulation"- I will only accept this if it is specifically referring to the mortgage/financial crisis.
14) "NATO allies"- A cooler sounding way of saying "Europe".
15) "tax cuts"
16) and no list would be complete without the obligatory "opposed this war from the beginning"

Ultimately, this winds up being one election where I feel sorry for the winner. I also want to throw in a plug here for Bob's new blog, it looks promising so far.