Using the same data, this Independent verification of CQ vote studies show that McCain votes with his party 70-80% of the time while Obama has a solid 95% toe-the-party-line voting record. That makes McCain more independent, more of a maverick and less partisan than Obama.

Since these conclusions are from the same data set, here is your choice Lucy -

EITHER
The “McCain is Bush III” meme is mindless and meaningless sloganeering.
-OR-
Barack Obama is just another run-of-the-mill Democratic Party partisan hack.

what part of voting 90% of the time with President Bush over the past 3 years makes someone a “Maverick”?

That’s a neat but insubstantial talking point. Presidents don’t vote in the U.S. Senate, so any attempt to compare McCain’s position in a given roll call with Bush’s has to start by fabricating the position Bush is assumed to take. The 90% figure you blithely quote comes from a CQ study, and by divorcing the statistic from the study, the study’s methodology is sidelined and the real limits of the study obscured. CQ’s study recorded only votes taken by McCain where the President had an explicitly-stated view; thus, the figure actually means that McCain has voted in line with Bush in 90% of the votes where he was present and where Bush personally had an explicitly-stated position.

The upshot is that there’s an obvious question you have to ask yourself before accepting those numbers: What percentage of the total votes cast that year does that represent? A somewhat extreme example will illustrate. The Senate held about 400 roll call votes last year. If Bush only expressed his view clearly enough to count in the CQ study on ten of them, and McCain voted with Bush on nine of those occasions, your 90% figure is accurate - but misleading, because it says nothing at all about McCain’s position on the other 97.75% of the votes the Senate took.

“But if you want to educate yourself, on his website there are very detailed policy positions which lay out Obama’s vision for the present and future.” - Ed

Agree with Dyre and KK. NJ-Ed missed the point. Its not that we don’t know his positions. Its that we do. And they look exactly like the run of the mill, tired old liberal Democratic policies that have been knocking around for the last 20 years. Obama’s policy positions could be the same policies as Clinton (either one) , or Kerry, or Dukakis, or Carter or Mondale. Where is the transcendent “change”? Where is the new politics? Because if all Obama is saying is - “don’t vote for them because they are Conservative Republicans, vote for me because I am a Liberal Democrat” - then I’ve got a news flash for you - That’s not change. That’s the same old politics.

In other words, Obama has to make the sale to moderates and independents. So far he has been sticking to lots of shiny promises we’d all like to see fulfilled, if only we all had unlimited resources.

After all no one thinks peace is a lousy idea. And no one thinks making education a crucial priority is a bad idea. And no one thinks paying less for gas is a bad idea. And no one thinks national unity is a bad idea. And so on.

Fact is, moderates and independents want more than platitudes. They want the blanks filled in. Every day that the blanks don’t get filled in, more of these folk start kicking the tires on McCain. The more liberal folk among us just HATE to hear this, and tend to default to how McCain is every bit the anti-christ that George Bush is. That’s not gonna get it done.

Dyre: It’s hard to resist following the polls, but I’m hopeful that Obama is doing just what he did in the primary season: keeping his head down, with his eye on the prize (270) rather than on overall nation polls. This group has run a tight campaign ship so far, and I hope to see it continue.

[McCain] is after all a figure that the political center of this country knows pretty well. Obama? Not so much.

Wait a second, didn’t you hear that McCain is not a political centrist, and in fact is an arch-conservative no different than Bush? Not convinced? Well, maybe after Obama simply repeats this meme over and over again for the next 2 months it will magically come true.

But if you want to educate yourself, on his website there are very detailed policy positions which lay out Obama’s vision for the present and future. Comparing them to McCain’s policy papers is like a college thesis vs. 2nd grade book report. But I wouldn’t expect McCain’s media to tell you that, it would spoil your narrative.