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How McCain lost the centrist vote
October 27, 2008
The odds in the US election were piled against Senator John McCain from the start. His party chose him reluctantly in the first place. He was nominated not by acclamation but by elimination, leaving many Republicans asking what had happened. So far as the wider electorate was concerned, he was asking to succeed a president of his own party who, by the end, was setting records for unpopularity.
During the campaign Mr McCain saw his strongest issue, national security, lose much of its previous urgency. The economy, where he was much less confident, took its place as the country’s greatest concern – and how. The next president faces the most challenging economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s. On top of everything else, a press that had loved Mr McCain when he was a thorn in the side of the Republican party was certain to turn against him once he might become the next Republican president. And so it did.
Everything pointed the same way: 2008 would be a Democratic year. To overcome these odds – to go into next week’s election ahead in the polls, instead of where he is, five to 10 points behind – Mr McCain had to fight a flawless campaign and Senator Barack Obama had to slip up. As things turned out, it was the other way round.
The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.
On the nail again Clive. Although I take issue with your using the left-wing tag against Obama. Palin takes money from the Oil Boys and gives it to the Hockey Mums; hardly right-wing practice.
Posted by: tim | October 27th, 2008 at 2:17 am | Report this commentIt could have been said much more succinctly: McCain caved into the right wing of his party - on the issues and on his catastrophic vice-presidential choice. He deserves to lose the election for this reason, as Colin Powell, Scott McClellan and many other thoughtful, moderate Republicans seem to agree.
Posted by: algasema | October 27th, 2008 at 2:44 am | Report this commentExpect some sabre rattling from the GOP in the last week before the vote.Some small help from Brigadier Bush Something to scare the electorate back in behind GOP battlements. Something Aghani or Iraqui perhaps. Ah…..what was that? Something on the Syrian border? Well well well.
Posted by: derek | October 27th, 2008 at 3:57 am | Report this commentI suspect many white collar corporate/techno types would prefer to work for an Obama style CEO with a strong senior management team, rather than the Bush era hero CEO (fading fast) with a Palin type HR nazi.
Can Syria hit oil terminals, Dubai etc like Iran ? Maybe not.
Posted by: Anarchocynicalist | October 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am | Report this commentThis is the 55th US Presidential election, and Obama and McCain are competing to be the forty-third individual to be elected President. Most candidates lose when contesting a US presidential campaign to succeed a president of the same party, unless the candidate was the outgoing Vice-president. The first 15 terms may be discounted since there was only one organised national political party, Democratic-Republican. But in any case, the next seven elected Presidents after the first, George Washington, had served as either Vice-President or Secretary of State or both.
Posted by: Robert McDowell, Edinburgh | October 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm | Report this commentThe only exceptions that offer hope for McCain were Republicans, William Taft, Rutherford Hayes, his predecessor Ulysses Grant, and Democrat Herbert Hoover. But J.McCain is no U.S.Grant - for one thing not commonly known, Grant was very well read, a voracious reader of books, novels and histories, which McCain is not. Hayes lost the popular vote, but was controversially voted in 8/7 by an Electoral Commission of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. after a bitter dispute, bribery and fraud in the Electoral College. Could McCain steal the election by some such shenanigans; most probably not? Taft had been Secretary for War and was “a Progressive” and endorsed by the popular outgoing President Roosevelt (T). McCain cannot match up to that. Hoover beat a Republican Party divided internally by religion, having nominated a Catholic Candidate, Alfred Smith. McCain did hope that the Democrats could be similarly divided between Clinton (H) and Obama, or divided over Obama’s race, middle name or partial anagram of his last name, or maybe by the fact that he is not of Irish, Scottish, English, Dutch or Scots-Irish stock that are overwhelmingly dominant choices as presidential candidates, successful or otherwise, among whom Scots-Irish are pre-eminent by far, having been elected 18 times!
This line of electoral logic reasoning may be suspect as ‘urban legend’ and possibly not the most powerful example of such legends, of which the most chilling must be Shawnee Chief Tenskwatawa’s curse (upon his military foe President Harrison). This cursed any president elected in a year ending with the number zero (which has since turned up 8 times) that they will die in office. This “zero-year curse” “came true” for Harrison (elected 1840) and for the next six zero-year presidents - Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Roosevelt (FDR) and Kennedy. Reagan (elected 1980), among his other accomplishments “broke the curse” by surviving an assassin’s bullet and so too, so far, has Bush (GW). It must nevertheless be a comfort to both candidates that noughties will not have a zero at the end of the year until 2020 when everything will, of course, including the curse of our present financial and economic crises, become that much clearer.
Thank you for the well researched, comprehensive, and utterly irrelevant American presidential history, Mr. McDowell.
Posted by: algasema | October 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm | Report this commentTwist of logic there Clive,
“During the campaign Mr McCain saw his strongest issue, national security, lose much of its previous urgency” sure, because McCain, Bush and the slim majority in Congress had the will to support the surge, despite Obama and Biden’s and the rest of the Left’s opposition to it.
The Surge worked, the media (you are one of the media, by the way), gives little or no credit to McCain or Bush for the success, and Obama benefits. If there was no Surge, there very well could be a genocidal bloodbath in Iraq right now, which I am sure would also be blamed on Bush.
Not 2 months ago the media was assailing us with high gas prices being the #1 issue in the election, with Sen. Obama wanting to tax and jail people daring to seek profit in the energy industry. Now gas prices are down 25% from one month ago, and wholesale prices are below the level of 1 year ago, which must shock the media as they have decided not to report on this issue.
Given the cigarette smokers are the most despised class of Americans (ranked even below Oil Exec’s and Congressmen), it is a real strain to believe “Mr Obama is an enormously impressive and likeable man”, unless of course you skip the part that he is a tobacco addict, risking his children’s lungs to provide his nicotine fix.
JBP
(interesting captcha, Kickapoo, a very small river that runs near my home, and pretty much nowhere else)
Posted by: John Powers | October 27th, 2008 at 1:25 pm | Report this commentThe Osabama tricks, an American nightmare.
Against the enormous pressure, from celebrities I keep in the highest esteem, from editorial comments like those of the New York Times and of the Financial Times I keep in the highest esteem and from the spectacular alleged double digit leads of Sen. Obama I believe are among the most suspicious practices in the campaign but framed in the right context are quite instructive,
I hope you esteem my courage and perseverance to articulate accurately what is going on with a phenomenological methodology.
I hope you will not to quickly dismiss as nonsense my allegation that if Adm. Colin Powell so all of a sudden endorsed Sen. Obama he did so in a direct reaction of an unpublished paper I was preparing. For now I do not enter the discussion how he got hold of it. Of course, to hear Adm. Powell paraphrase my criticisms to turn them in eulogies for Sen. Obama, is not purely a formidable flatter on my behalf, it provides huge credibility.
Where Adm. Powell hides behind the cliché-systemic disdain for women, in this case Gov. Palin, to dissimulate his true pretext, I am terribly shocked that such a high ranking officer does not precisely act as a gentleman.
Your colleague Gideon Rachman had a similar reaction to my comment on his blog-chapter concerning Gov. Palin.
I give you some excerpts of the paper, which, to my shame, I keep wavering to send it around, officially I mean.
The Osabama tricks
Marketing pushed pop-up populism and the global cheating on a lasting democracy
Giacomo Pandolfo Tartini (i.)
Chapter I. Introducing some contrapuntal tales
The clinically clean logic of an analysis that reveals the formidable fake of a flatter campaign, is that a smear campaign or is that about substance?
Against the enormous pressure, harnessed by celebrities I keep in the highest esteem, not at least the wonderful Ms. Barbara Streisand, to consider the presidential nomination of Sen. Obama as a historic breakthrough, some contrapuntal tales deserve to be or not to be substantiated.
The clean substance of this logic logically leads to pre-emptive impeachment.
The dirty depths of perversion (i.) in the subliminal anti-American communication, (ii.) in the abuse of knowledge extorted from otherwise highly respectable people and (iii.) the criminal foreign organization (a.) to theft of creativity, (b.) to destabilize markets and electorate, and (c.) to obstruction of access to press and internet for accurate criticism, like this paper or excerpts from it, will make a short procedure. If the author survives on course.
A very disturbing observation however is, this is all so visible, so evident, so readily before everybody’s ears and eyes and yet most media, always loudly critical of the actions of great democracies, and the Democratic party, otherwise so blue, keep actively blind and death.
God bless America.
Chapter I Introducing some contrapuntal tales
I. Massive foreign anti-American support for Sen. Obama
Why? Why is it that world-wide, whoever ever was gifted with some type or degree of anti-Americanism, in the era of President George W. Bush or of President William J. Clinton or of other Presidents alike, would vote for Sen. Obama. Every poll abroad, put in adequate context, confirms this observation.
…..
III. Equal opportunity of access to the highest offices for women of all colors
When a black male pop-up candidate can’t win an election, the entire society is racist. 6.8 % of the population.
When a feminine woman can’t win an election it is she talks so stupid, she walks so stupid, she dresses so stupid, and her only quality is sex appeal, shortly, women are too stupid and the entire society very democratic. 50 % of the population.
The systematic barrage of insults and insinuations against the democratically elected Governor of Alaska is a brutal insult to the State of Alaska itself. Insults against one state are insults against every American state.
….
Exactly on that day when „especially the one who traveled the farthest”, Sen. Hilary Clinton, had to leave the race with more than 50 % of the nomination votes, especially for an academic human and minority rights activists and constitutional lawyer, it must have been clear that a decent nominee had to know and to acknowledge the moral duty to select a woman as vice-presidential candidate. Change? Women? Democracy? „He doesn’t get it!” Sen. McCain did.
Posted by: Egon B.E. Friberger | October 27th, 2008 at 7:46 pm | Report this commentI’m not sure it would matter all that much what McCain does or doesn’t do. The fix for Obama has been in for quite a while. Democrat operatives have been working overtime to skew votes in his favor by hook or crook.
ACORN, a liberal organization with close ties to Obama has been signing up hundreds of thousands of non-existent voters, illegal aliens and convicted felons. The majority of these are late registration, hoping that by overwelming counties they will not have the time or personnel to do necessary checks.
Democratics groups are doing short-term leases on apartments or houses in Ohio and other swing states, soley for the purpose of having an address for voter registration, then casting absentee ballots, for Obama of course. The people casting these votes neither live nor work in these states.
Now we’re seeing Democrats thowing out military votes as Military personnel tend to vote overwelmingly Republican. In the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida, as well as in Pennsylvania in 2004, concerted efforts were made to reject military absentee ballots, and national outrage erupted over leaks of Democrat memoranda instructing their legal teams on the ground during the process to disallow military ballots.
This last week in Virginia, a battleground state, Fairfax county registrar Rokey Suleman has thrown out all but five of the hundreds of overseas military votes because witnesses didn’t include an address. Note the instructions given to Virginia service members, “Block 7: Sign and date in the presence of a witness. The witness must sign and date the form.” Nothing is said about an address requirement for the witness and the FWAB form offers only a signature block for the witness, no place provided for an address.
Suleman founded the Trumball, Ohio, Young Democrats and ran for office there as a Democrat earlier this year. Suleman says his office is non-partisan, yet some are asking why he would go out of his way to register inmates with possible felony convictions which would make their vote illegal, yet reject military ballots on a hyper-technicality.
I don’t wonder at all.
Posted by: Connie | October 27th, 2008 at 8:37 pm | Report this commentConnie: I think both Democrats and Republicans are finding dishonest ways to register voters. The best thing to do now is postpone the election but the FEC won’t do that and Obama has lots of lawyers to make sure that nothing negative is reported about him in the next week. Either nobody cares about this or his lawyers have threatened to sue anyone who mentions it.
“state and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about ‘Joe the Plumber,’” the nickname of Joe Wurzelbacher.
“Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate. Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.”
Although I’m sure the polls are accurate, there is something really strange that I will never understand. I live in the most liberal city in the country - this city should be filled with Obama supporters everywhere but in the last year I have only seen two people wearing Obama shirts or buttons and in my neighboorhood there aren’t many signs for him although I live in a very liberal place. I have looked in other neighborhoods and it’s the same which doesn’t make much sense and I don’t have an explanation for it.
Many people realized what kind of politician he is when he not only voted for the bailout but pressured members of the black caucus to vote for it also. But according to the polls lots of people still support him.
Posted by: Jennifer - San Francisco | October 27th, 2008 at 9:10 pm | Report this commentConnie: “Mary” in latest guise? Sounds like it.
“In the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida, as well as in Pennsylvania in 2004, concerted efforts were made to reject military absentee ballots”
This is a blatantly false statement. Read Jeffery Toobin’s outstanding book on the counting of votes in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, rather than making making these baseless assertions. Usual pure nonsense.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 27th, 2008 at 9:12 pm | Report this commentSorry, don’t know who Mary is, but if she agrees with me, she can’t be all bad.
I’ve seen you refer to Jeffrey Toobin’s book on a number of postings. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Nobel and read parts of it. I consider it skillfully written to come to his previously decided conclusion without being too blatant about it. He worked for ABC and CNN, hardly bastions of unbiased reporting, and (this is important) HE’S A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT!
I am old enough to remember vividly the 2000 election as it was my first time voting. I voted for Gore (I was young and naive). I watched news and local coverage voraciously because I am a lifelong resident of Florida and it was happening in my state. Democrats were on every news channel and made absolutely no secret of their attempts to throw out the military votes because they didn’t have a postmark showing when they were mailed (outgoing overseas military mail at the time was not postmarked). This was ridiculous because they were received in Florida well before the deadline. My cousin, stationed with the US Army in Germany at the time cast one of the votes they tried to disqualify. I and several members of my family were so angered by this that we immediately changed voter registration affiliation from Democrat to Independent.
As for you basically calling me a liar, I’ll just consider the source. A little research from some credible sources (not Mr. Toobin) and reading contemporary newspaper articles of the time will prove you wrong.
Posted by: Connie | October 27th, 2008 at 10:20 pm | Report this commentConnie: Sorry, but you still sound like “Mary” in most respects, although now that I think about it a better writer
“Nobel” prize. “Barnes and Noble” bookstore.
“Democrats were on every news channel and made absolutely no secret of their attempts to throw out the military votes because they didn’t have a postmark showing when they were mailed (outgoing overseas military mail at the time was not postmarked).”
Toobin’s book clearly describes the strategy and actions of both Democrats and Republicans in regard to including or excluding ballots. No question that the Democrats would have preferred to exclude military ballots from overseas due to the likelihood of more Republican than Democratic votes, but Toobin notes that there were in fact problems with the lack of a postmark, the arrival date of the ballots and so on. He does not go into any more detail aside from noting that. Whether there might have been fraudulent ballots or whether all the military ballots were perfectly legitimate, who knows.
The clear implication of your comment is that the Democrats in Florida in 2000 were one-sided in trying to exclude likely Republican votes. The possible exclusion of military ballots was only one of many problems with the Florida count, as Toobin thoroughly presents in his book. Ultimately the issue was moot given that the Supreme Court intervened.
Who cares whether Jeffrey Toobin is a Democrat or not or a commentator on television or not?
One reads a book based on the facts and arguments within the book, not on irrelevant factors having to do with the author’s possible political affiliation. Toobin’s book is outstanding in all aspects.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 27th, 2008 at 10:44 pm | Report this commentConnie: The Obama bully brigade thinks anyone who doesn’t support their candidate is the same person and they will never respond to your questions so you might be very frustrated trying to have a discussion with them.
Question: Why do you think someone in the Senate would let a criminal buy the empty lot next to his house when newspapers were already reporting that he was involved in illegal business?
Response: You’re a robot.
Question: Why do you think someone who wants to be President refuses to give anyone his college records or health records? Why won’t anyone who knew him in college talk about him? Was he celibate before he met Michelle or have those women been told not to talk to people also?
Response: Palin is a horrible person who spends too much money on her wardrobe.
Question: Why won’t he tell anyone the names of all his donors?
Response: You’re a racist.
They’re probably being paid by his campaign so they’re never going to respond to your questions because they’re only paid to repeat what they have been told. Today there were some negative stories about him - they found a tape from a few years ago where he talks about “spreading the wealth” and also someone illegally got access to information from someone who asked him a difficult question.
That means that soon reporters will find out that someone is making threats against him. He already had to leave for his relative who “won’t make it for more than a few days” so he can’t use that excuse again. This is what always happens when there is anything negative about him although the Secret Service has determined that nobody said “kill him” at any rallies. The only proof they have is someone who claims to have heard it although nobody else did - they studied videos of the rallies and nobody threatened him.
Of course I’m not saying that people should be allowed to threaten politcians anytime they want but any public figure is going to have those problems. I’m sure people have threatened Palin also but you don’t hear about it.
Posted by: Jennifer - San Francisco | October 27th, 2008 at 10:54 pm | Report this commentWendell, Thank you for correcting my spelling.
The reason Toobin’s book doesn’t go into any more detail about the Democratic efforts to throw out military votes is because it was Democrats doing the disenfranchising, which doesn’t fit well with his ideology. Better to just skim over this and not provide too much detail that may put Democrats in a bad light.
If you think personal viewpoint has no bearing on conclusions, I have to say, that’s pretty naive. Just look at decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. It’s nearly always along the Justices personal and political idealogical lines.
The main point of my post was that, currently, here and now, present tense, the integrity of the voting process is being corrupted and invalid votes are being tallied. As.I.write.this. Not eight years ago, NOW!
I suspect that Obama is the main beneficiary of those illegal votes due to the identity of the perpetrators; but it doesn’t matter who the votes are for. The point is there is a lot of evidence that massive illegal voting is going on and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Where is government oversight that’s supposed to keep voting honest and LEGAL?
Posted by: Connie | October 28th, 2008 at 2:23 am | Report this commentWendell Murray, It is a sign of the desperation surrounding a losing campaign that so many right wing conspiracy theorists and fantasists are coming out of the woodwork in the final days, just ahead of the deluge.
The tragedy (admittedly, not in the Greek sense) is that these lies and delusions are unlikely to disappear after the election if Obama wins, but will probably dog the nation for his entire presidency.
But if we waste any time on them, then we are the fools, as you have also succinctly pointed out.
Posted by: algasema | October 28th, 2008 at 3:03 am | Report this commentalgasema: Ditto, but then again look at the McCain campaign. Ineptitude upon ineptitude upon ineptitude…
It is not even as though lies and slander are the “fallback position”. They are the campaign for the Republicans. Truly amazing to witness. I am no fan of Newt Gingrich, but he is now on record excoriating his fellow Republicans for an abysmal campaign devoid of anything of substance.
Still votes are yet to be cast, so who knows what may happen.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 28th, 2008 at 3:11 am | Report this commentIf the desire for clean and fair elections are a ’sign of desperation’, then Jennifer’s latest post on the left’s tendancy to weave and dodge to avoid discussion is spot on.
Posted by: Connie | October 28th, 2008 at 3:27 am | Report this commentI appreciated your post, Mr. Robert McDowell of Edinburgh, but must point out a trivial error. Mr Obama is part European. His mother, Ann Dunham, is of Cherokee, English and Irish heritage.
Posted by: toosinbeymen | October 28th, 2008 at 11:35 am | Report this commentBarack Obama never stated that redistribution should be from tax payers to those who do not pay taxes, that is a lie, deception and a fallacy. What he is talking about is “fairness” and opportunity for all. That there should be wealth for all, not just the special few!
Please be wary of the touch-screen voting machines. If your district uses one, be sure to confirm that the candidate you chose on the screen is the one that is checked off on the screen and not the other candidate.
In one Republican voting place in Florida the woman who ran the place said they STRESS absentee ballots for their contsituents and she had stacks of them on a corner table which had already been filled out and sent back. I got to thinking about that. Why would she Stress these ballots instead of people voting on the machines?
Posted by: Angellight | October 28th, 2008 at 1:34 pm | Report this commentAL,
Your are correct to a point..but wrong in general. Obama talks at length of the most effective ways to distribute wealth, not only income. I am not sure he knows the difference between wealth and income, but his bubble headed analysis in the 2001 interview are directed towards moving wealth from the politically disfavored to distribute to the politically favored, not just income.
Aside from a McCain victory, the best chance for the economy is that a President Obama will be as incompetent and ineffective at redistributing wealth as he has been at reforming education, making neighborhoods safer etc.
Ask Jennifer Hudson how well Barack Obama has done in making the South Side of Chicago a safer place to raise children.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | October 28th, 2008 at 3:43 pm | Report this commentJohn Powers: I don’t think it’s fair to blame that on Obama - her family wasn’t killed because they were shot walking in their neighborhood. It wasn’t a robbery either. And even wealthy people have similiar problems.
Posted by: Jennifer - San Francisco | October 28th, 2008 at 5:57 pm | Report this commentJ-SF,
No blame attached for 1 grisly multiple murder, just a flashing red light that Chicago is an extremely dangerous place bought and sold by the Democratic Party.
The political leaders of Chicago, including Mayor Daley and Senator Obama should have at least some responsibility for making the City the murder capital of the United States, don’t you think?
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | October 28th, 2008 at 8:34 pm | Report this comment[…] How McCain lost the centrist vote […]
Posted by: Роуминг в странах ЕС подешевеет вдвое | November 4th, 2008 at 10:08 pm | Report this comment