Someone help me convince my friend that Obama is the better choice

[Anonymous]

So I have a friend who is undecided about whom to vote for. I started off with our right to choose, lame start to my friend as I later realized because he is more afraid that Obama will raise his taxes from 38% to something higher while the majority of the country pays 10%. In my gut I know his assumption is wrong but how do I combat this effectively. I need facts and there are some really smart people on this board so please help.

[Anonymous]

If your friend is concerned about his tax rate with Obama, I'd start with what type of taxes he'd pay with Obama's plan. I saw the different tax increases depending on the income. None of the ranges had significant tax increases, except for when the income was north of $1 million.

[Anonymous]

Try going to washingtonpost.com and looking up the tax plans. Here is what alot of people do not get, McCain is not proposing any changes to the AMT and the recent changes simply adjusted the bar. We make over $250,000 but with the AMT we wouldn't receive a tax cut from McCain. Interestingly, McCain tax on insurance would hit us..though again AMT affects this. We really wouldn't receive much of a tax increase from Obama either because the AMT already hits us.

McCain tax on health insurance really scares me as this is one of the few tax free benefits that you can use for recruiting. I suspect this lead business to cut benefits which would affect us.

[Anonymous]

I would suggest to your friend that he read the article linked to below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100602935.html

If you cut through some of the rhetoric about Palin's manner of speaking, you will see that their have been people at her rallies using racial epithets and shouting out that Obama should be killed. My impression from reading the article is that Palin did nothing to discourage her supporters from that kind of behavior - if that is the case, she is a disgrace. Do we really want someone like that to be our next VP, and do we really want someone who picked that person as his running mate to be the next President. Whether you agree with all of his policies, it's almost as if you have to vote for Obama by default.