I firmly believe that the economic situation was the torpedo that sunk McCain, no matter how brilliantly he could have run and even if he had selected Morgan Freeman as God to be his running mate. His attempt to broker the solution was only the coup`de grais.
Bringing Palin on board simply amounted to rearranging the deck chairs. Palin who couldn’t open her mouth without demonstrating how totally unfit she was in the not implausible possibility that McCain doesn’t survive four years. Troopergate and wardrobe were just gravy.
Seems to me Palin lost McCain the more moderate and traditional (economic, small government) conservatives. His choice of Palin saw the likes of George Will and Christopher Buckley (to name a few) defect. In nearly every media endorsement of Obama I saw the standout reason they tipped for Obama was McCain’s choice of Palin as a running mate.
Palin may have snared him money but ultimately ruined his election more than anything else. The economic meltdown certainly did not help but then McCain fumbled that one himself. Had he responded better he could have mitigated its negative effect on his run or possibly even made it a winner for him had it appeared he was “more experienced” and stable than Obama.
Had he made speeches like his concession speech (moderate, hopeful, well delivered) all along I would have seriously considered voting for him.
Republicans get nominated by appealing to the base, and then get elected by appealing to moderates. McCain tried to do it backwards. The result is what you got.
The Palin pick was a Hail Mary that was incomplete. Had she actually shown some trace of intelligence in the Couric interviews and had been allowed to show some brains in say going on Meet the Press, perhaps things could have been different. But she quickly became a laughingstock. Claiming with a straight face that she had foreign policy experience based on the proximity of her state to Russia was the high point and it went downhill from there.
I disagee that the attacks on Palin were unfair. What was unfair were the attacks BY Palin on Obama. Palling around with terrorists. Socialist. Dangerous. Going to raise taxes. The McCain-Palin ticket was more concerned about working the refs so they could get away with fouls than they were with putting ideas on the table.
Did anyone notice the Palin McCain handshake when McCain’s concession speech was over? I would have expected a hug and a kiss, but McCain turned to Palin and she stuck out her hand instead of an embrace. Speaks volumes in my opinion to how much they actually knew each other, and to how she feels about the man. I think she began to feel like she was thrown to the wolves - how ironic.
count my father in that camp. He is a conservative, Christian Republican. He confided to me that he “held his nose” and voted for Obama because “this country is in a helluva mess, but I don’t want to think about what would happen if Palin becomes President.”
I also felt he took a long while to mention her in his concession and gave her short shrift. With the stuff we heard out of the campaign in the last few weeks, as McCain’s advisers kept complaining she was “going rogue” and such, I’m sure there was some significant tension.
Let’s remember that she was McCain’s choice. It was McCain’s choice to be swayed by the far right. It was McCain’s choice to run the negative campaign. If he didn’t stand up to the right or the Rove people, that was his choice. I think his admitting that the mistakes were his in his gracious concession speech reflected that. I’m betting that right now he is regretting his choices.
The Dems need a few Republican senators to get things passed that we need. I think that McCain may be one of them. He is really a far better person than the one who chose Palin.
The evil twin of this thread would be one positing (which I truly believe) had the Democrats nominated any average white middle-of-the-road male (say, John Edwards, minus that whole banging the videographer thing), they would’ve won by 20 pct points. This was an election tailor-made for a Demo landslide. Only Obama’s race, upbringing, name, experience and voting record (none of which are a problem for me, just to be clear) made it moderately close. Or, in other words: this was probably the only possible time to elect our first black president.
That’s the logic that hurt the Democrats in 2000 and 2004 especially. Some writer out there theorized that there may never be another election where all four major-party candidates are white men, so perhaps we’ll never see that safe-candidate logic again.
Palin was a disastrous choice for the VP spot when you consider the McCain campaign’s strategy overall. Palin? Appeals to the base. Character attacks? Appeal to the base. Joe the plumber? Appeals to the base. Sure, Palin gave McCain a bump and secured the base of the Republican party immediately after the RNC, but then McCain proceeded to play to the base for the duration of the campaign, making her purpose on the ticket redundant.
Add to that the fact that she’s a grade A moron, and it cost him big. Look at how many individuals and newspapers endorsed Obama while mentioning her as a problem.
Palin on paper wasn’t a disasterous choice. What sunk her was that after her well-received convention speach, she bombed and bombed and bombed every time she appeared in front of a camera without a teleprompter, until the McCain campaign panicked and decided that she wasn’t going to be allowed to talk to reporters anymore, just give speaches at rallies.
Sarah Palin isn’t as stupid as she seems. But although she was able to rally the troops and raise the cash, she was totally unable to attract voters who weren’t hard-core republicans. For every hard-core republican that she energized, she turned off two center-right moderates. You can’t win an election with that kind of math.
She was, though. McCain’s advisers may have played a big role in convincing him to avoid Lieberman, but he made the call. Similarly, the perception that she is a moron was only hurt by the campaign’s decision to keep her the hell away from the media.
I think Sarah Palin will go down as one of a great number mistakes in McCain’s campaign. Her role was to bring a tepid base back to McCain. For that purpose, she did her job very well.
By the time the race came, however, I think she was repelling independent voters. Starting with the Couric interview where she appeared not just unprepared but woefully inept- to making McCarthy style attacks at Obama and th democrats in general. Even cons piracy theories with the press. (Which the OP pointed out- despite the reputation as “liberal media” doesn’t seem to have any problem rolling democrats under the bus. And I know certain publications have deserved their reputation as liberal or conservative; but for the most part I think most papers exist to sell papers and not to push an agenda. I think the Republicans out there are just pissed that not everything printed is “GLORY GLORY THE REPUUUUUUBLICANS!”)
So, IMO Palin ended up being a detriment to his campaign probably more than she helped. However, ultimately, we vote for President and not VP, and there are a lot of other reasons McCain lost…
His campaign was poorly run. He never had a good answer for the economic crisis- throwing different ideas out there; and when he couldn’t find anything that stuck- tried to change the conversation to a total smear campaign. A smear campaign that clearly people didn’t buy. Plus he wasn’t able to raise the money Obama could- so while Obama had the luxury of running a campaign in red states, while McCain had to abandon blue states. Even forcing McCain to spend his money in states that, theoretically, shouldn’t really be close- spreading McCains funds too thin.
Plus- among independents- McCain lost all three debates, and the second one particularly badly.
So, had he picked Lieberman, would anything be different? Maybe? But I don’t think so.
Generally true but not in this case. As others have noted a lot of conservative voters bailed because of Palin. Not so much that they worried over her being VPOTUS but the very real fear an old and problems with health McCain would kick the bucket and leave her POTUS. Positively scared the pants off a lot of people. Republicans included.
But you’re making it sound as if it was a shocker that a total unknown, whom he had met for an hour or two before announcing her, and who had about 15 minutes of public exposure, would be a disaster. The advantage of a better known candidate, like say Romney or Huckabee, is that they’d already been vetted by the media and by McCain himself extensively at length. He LIKED something about her being a total unknown–that’s the downside of his maverick qualities: he does reckless, impulsive, stupid shit, with no thought of the consequences, even when they’re obvious ones.
God, am I glad we sidestepped the pile of steaming shit that is John McCain.
I am SOOOO relieved to see this discussion in the past tense. My gut reaction when she was picked was that she was a disaster… but there was always the chance that if it worked, it would be viewed by history as the most ingenious choice ever. God we dodged a bullet. I’d like to think it was all her fault, but it was uphill for McCain before she ever came on the scene.
The same Newsweek article that jsgoddess links to points out that she asked to speak along with McCain during his concession and was denied. No surprise either that she wanted to speak, probably to help set herself up for the future, or that a McCain campaign strategist nixed the idea.