[“Election 2008" is an ongoing Money Morning series that examines the investor implications of the presidential election campaign] By Martin Hutchinson Contributing Editor One thing is clear about John McCain’s economic policies: They won’t be a mere continuation of George W. Bush’s policies. They can’t afford to be. While Bush’s tax cuts have been highly beneficial both to the stock market and to investors directly, the Bush Administration has taken what was a $150 billion federal budget surplus and transformed it into a $400-billion-plus deficit. That’s at a time when stock markets and real estate markets have been ebullient, producing lots of bonuses and capital gains to tax. Most of the deficit increase has resulted from sloppiness on spending; only about one third of the negative swing has been caused by the Bush tax cuts. Some of those cuts – most notably the 2003 ...

Earlier in February we at Election Stocks covered the FDA’s regulation of the tobacco market and considered whether or not it would be beneficial to tobacco companies. Now Christopher Atayan from TheStreet.com writes in correspondence with our own Jeff Miller: Philip Morris is supporting the FDA regulation of tobacco because they believe it will freeze their market share at the current levels. RJ Reynolds is adamantly against it for practical reasons. I was at a recent RJ Reynolds customer event and they gave a very illuminating presentation on this issue and ramifications. Remember in the event the FDA does get control of tobacco they can oestensibly declare the product off the market any time they want. Or in the case of Lorillard they can declare menthol not an allowed product.That ability to decree an industry and company out of business is ...

No, it’s not Pawlenty. It’s not Romney or Lieberman either. It’s Sarah Palin, first-term gov of Alaska. Palin is a social conservative, opposed to abortion, opposed to same-sex marriage, and pro-gun. Alaska loves her. She ran for gov on a clean-up-government campaign, and doesn’t suffer fools or oil companies gladly.

Among other things, he is an unashamed White Sox fan. Scott: “If the Cubs and the White Sox both make it to the World Series? Obama: “I would be going.” Scott: “Who would you root for? Obama: “Oh, that’s easy. White Sox. I’m not one of these fair weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball. Southside.” Just a joke, son, but we wouldn’t say he was catering to the northside vote here.

Which Hillary will we get? Sure she knows exactly what she should say, but will we see the perfectly dressed and coifed former Presidential candidate? Or will we see the Hillary that seems to have forgotten the number of her hairdresser, and the location of her hair spray and make-up mirror? To be clear: her appearance was so important when she was a candidate, but not so much as she campaigns for Obama.

Here is a short list of essential pros and cons to VP pick Joe Biden. For more in depth analysis we recommend the following articles: On The Biden VP Pick Biden’s plagiarism should not be forgotten The Case for Joe Biden The Downside to Joe Biden How Biden Helps Obama

I just received the official text message from Barack Obama confirming Biden as his VP. An awfully strange time to send it out, of course, but you heard it first from Election Stocks.

Biden was never a frontrunner in the 2008 Election, but he was always considered as a favorite VP choice (along with Bill Richardson). It seems, however, that if Barack chooses Biden as VP, quite a few things he said back in his presidential bid would come back to haunt him. Most notably: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.” “The Biden for President Campaign today congratulated Sen. Barack Obama for arriving at a number of Sen. Biden’s long-held views on combating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” “My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany” of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.” It would almost be like Biden would be doing McCain’s work for him. Read the original article here for more examples.

Republicans have long counted on the rural vote to help them win battleground states. It seems like McCain should be able to do the same, especially with the view that Obama is elitist (remember “bittergate”?). Unfortunately for McCain, the economic strife that rural voters perceive to be caused by the Bush administration is causing more and more rural voters to either side with Obama or not vote at all. Rural voters have in the past been shown to have a significant impact, especially in swing states: Rural voters accounted for more than 10 percent of the total vote in all but three of 12 closely contested battleground states in 2004, and more than 20 percent in four of them — Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin — according to exit polls. In all but two of the states, Bush won the small-town ...

The Capital Gains Tax seems to be the chink in Obama’s economic armor. He is capable of adequately defending all his other tax hikes, or really any other part of his plan, but the Capital Gains Tax hike appears indefensible. From an NY Sun article: According to the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, Mr. Obama’s tax hike would knock off $2.5 trillion in capital formation over five years, or nearly 2% of gross domestic product. Even historically Capital Gains Tax hikes lead to slower growth while cuts leader to much fast growth, as illustrated by this graph (click for full size). In all fairness, Obama has tried to defend himself, but his defense tends to amount to “fairness and equality”, some nice words ...