One side wants Americans to feel the pain of other Americans:
Bill Clinton:
Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting, with incomes declining, job losses, poverty, and inequality rising, mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing, health care coverage disappearing, and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities, and gasoline.
Joe Biden:
Like millions of Americans, they’re asking questions as ordinary as they are profound, questions they never, ever thought they’d have to ask themselves. Should Mom move in with us, now that Dad’s gone? Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars just fill up the gas tank — how in God’s name, with winter coming, how are we going to heat the home? Another year, no raise; did you hear — did you hear, they may be cutting our health care at the company? Now, we owe more money on our home than our home is worth. How in God’s name are we going to send the kids to college? How are we going to retire?
Hillary:
Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?.
Obama:
We have more work to do…more work to do, for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now they’re having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay 7 bucks an hour; more to do for the father I met who was losing his job and chocking back the tears wondering how he would pay $4,500 a months for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her who have the grades, have the drive, have the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
The other side wants Americans to feel John MacCain’s pain as a POW in Vietnam:
John MacCain:
I found myself falling…with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn’t feel so tough anymore…A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
Thompson:
The guards cracked ribs, broke teeth off at their gums. They cinched a rope around his arms and painfully drew back his shoulders. Over four days, every two to three hours, the beatings resumed. During one especially fierce beating, he fell, again breaking his arm.
Sarah Palin:
I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions … and met far graver challenges … and knows how tough fights are won.
It sounds as if all they have to go on (besides attacks on Obama’s patriotism, etc.) is his past as a POW/Hero.
If that’s the case a fellow POW of MacCain could shed some more light on those qualifications:
I…believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.
…I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.
