You’re confusing the shared general unpopularity of Bush and Pelosi with the ire so many Americans feel for Bush. Lots of people are unhappy with Pelosi, but except for conservatives, not many feel strongly or even disagree with her policies. Contrarily, a huge portion of the country feel very strongly about their dislike and distrust for Bush and his policies. It’s not a remotely realistic comparison and that’s why nobody makes the argument.
As for his 10%, even Mccain has figured out that “Past performance suggests you can rely on me to get it right one out of ten times!” isn’t a good thing to brag about.
IMO, he never expected to get this far. I’m not too sure on the rest of the Pubbies, but it seems like Obama (and Hillary, actually) had an endgame planned. If you are trying to accomplish something, you need to play the game like you’re going to be around in the last round.
I don’t think McCain has. He’s been flat-footed the whole time, and he’s been flat-footed because he’s never actually expected to make it to the Big Show.
Now (A) was dead in the water by the end of the primaries. Clinton already tried running on the “Experience” ticket and it ultimately didn’t work for her and wasn’t going to work for McCain. A lot of people are sick of the status quo and want “Change”.
(B) helped give the campaign some gravitas in the form of claiming honor and a sense that you’re ready to defend the nation. But we’re not focused on national security issues today and the “honor” ideal was supplanted by a barrage of negative advertising for several months now.
Anyway, for lack of A, B or C really gaining traction, the campaign has been lurching from theme to theme trying to find something that works. Unfortunately for McCain, the dominant issue is the economy which is probably the area he’s worst at in the eyes of the voting public. He’s made some dumb statements regarding the economy and now has some missteps to hold against him as well (his “campaign suspension” to fix the bailout and his nearly universally panned mortgage plan). McCain is supposedly unveiling yet another new economic plan but I think, at this point, it’s a bit too late.
Well, you have to first assume that the people who planned and ran Sen. McCain’s campaign are human beings. People do make mistakes. It simply may be that in this case McCain’s campaign managers were simply not as competent as Sen. Obama’s. Why does the explanation have to go beyond that?
If you want more detailed thesis, though, I would suggest that there’s been four major blows to McCain’s compaign, each of which is independent of the others:
The economic blowup in the middle of September. McCain was ahead in the polls when the crisis hit and has been nosediving ever since.
The selection of Gov. Palin as his running mate, which has proven to be a dreadful embarassment.
The general lack of focus and message in McCain’s campaign, which seems to change its tune from day to day and often has the candidates and/or their spokespeople contradicting each other.
McCain’s debate performances have been generally poorly received due to his personality, which is angry and confrontational and doesn’t go over well with the audience.
Case #4 is unavoidable; it’s simply a fact that McCain looks pissy on camera and Obama does not. He can’t avoid that and at 72 he can’t learn to be someone he is not. It doesn’t bother me, personally, but it apparently really bothers a lot of people.
But in the cases of 1,2 and 3, they suggest a campaign that simply hasn’t been run as well as Obama’s. The choice of Palin was awfully ill-considered, and McCain’s erratic and dishonest response to the economic crisis - saying he would suspend his campaign without suspending it, running back to Washington, trying to cancel a debate, blowing off one TV appearance while making another - all this points to just sheer ineptitude in the McCain campaign leadership. None of these errors are necessary connected to one another in any sort of common philosophical way. They’re just stupid errors.
Why does one business fail while another succeeds? Why are the Rays in the playoffs while the Royals had another terrible season? Some people do a better job than others. Obama’s campaign managers have just done a better job, and McCain’s have been dreadful. Sometimes, you hire the wrong people.
I would have said Obama should be up by 20 points by now. 80% of the country thinks we’ve been heading down the wrong road under Bush and John McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time.
Why Obama isn’t leading by 20 points…well, I have my theories.
To the best of my knowledge, McCain was very briefly ahead during and just after the Republican National Convention, and then the polls settled back, more or less, to where they had been before both conventions, with a few percent fewer undecideds and Obama slowly gaining. His bump faded well before the current crisis began.
Only 20? You have a situation in which we are involved in two stalemated, unpopular wars, with the chief objective (Bin Laden) having escaped us for the past 7 years, and the whole reason for the other war turned out to be erroneous.
We are at an almost half a trillion dollar budget deficit. The economy is at it’s lowest point since the Great Depression, and the current President is enormously unpopular. We are talking about government involvement in the markets to the point of socialism.
And here is the kicker: McCain has been able to present himself as a maverick and a candidate for change when he has been part of this GOP majority from 2002-2006 that got us into these problems. How many budget deficits did he vote for? How many bills with earmarks did he vote for?
With the current situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no Republican opposition, let alone one within striking distance of winning. That is a testament to McCain and his campaign…
Echoing jtgain’s comments. It’s remarkable that McCain even has a shot at winning considering the economy, Iraq and general Bush fatigue. Makes me wonder how bad the Republicans would have to screw up to see a Democrat landslide.
John McCain is attempting to follow a president from his own party who has the highest disapproval rating of any president since polling began. A man that he votes with 90% of the time. And you wonder why he isn’t ahead by 10 points?
10 years ago, a Democrat Ham Sandwich would have been up by 20%.
Usually, you could count on the economy to tell you who was going to win. A historically bad economy, stagnant war, with 8 years of Republican rule, you would bank on a Democrat being the next president. However, over the last 8 years, things have gotten remarkably divisive, and people are digging in their heels.
Obama has been running a solid campaign, with record donations, no major gaffes to speak of. His opponents (in both the primary and general election) seem to get increasingly ridiculous as they continue to fall further behind. Both Clinton and McCain seem to have gone over the deep end trying to get back lost ground, making ridiculous claims about Obama, then acting like he’s the one playing dirty. When their strategy fails to work, they blame the media for being biased. If anyone points out how strange their tactics are, it’s bias again.
Maybe the landscape of the presidential election has changed and this is how it will be from now on, but I’m finding it very weird.
No, I’d say it’s a testament to American ignorance and/or stupidity and/or racism, all of which have a stranglehold on a depressingly significant minority of my fellow Americans (or prisoners, take your pick).
I mean seriously: 25 - 30% or so of the American people still think that Bush is awesome. That’s a distressingly high number of true believers. Such people will vote for any Republican, with the possible exception of Chuck Hegel.
This means McCain has only built on that by about fifteen percentage points. I’m guessing (totally pulling these figures out my nether regions – this isn’t a very serious attempt at estimating, so please take it with a huge pile of salt) that eight of those points are probably divided between those who think Obama is a Muslim terrorist and those who know he isn’t but would never vote for a black guy even if he were Jesus Himself risen among us.
Which leaves a mere seven for McCain to claim as his own thanks to the last vestiges of his maverick reputation. Not a very flattering picture of his campaign’s efficacy, if I’m anywhere in the correct ballpark.
For every mistake or vulnerability that Obama has, McCain has a bigger one. Sure, Obama has flipped on some issues - McCain has flipped on bigger ones and in a more blatant manner. Obama has special interests ties - McCain has bigger ones and has made special interests a bigger trust issue. Obama has made unpopular votes - McCain has made votes that were more unpopular. Obama tells a lie. And McCain tells five lies.
McCain’s problem is that everytime he tries to take a shot at Obama, he ends up putting two shots into his own foot.
I think the OP is rather telling in that it opens with a lot of assertions about Obama’s weaknesses – real and imagined – and doesn’t say a goddamned thing about the state of the world. In other words, it’s making exactly the same mistake as the McCain campaign. Voters care about themselves first, and play red state-blue state second.
McCain has not run a particularly good campaign since the primaries. His campaign was dead in the water, and he probably only survived the primaries because of the really shitty field that the Republicans put together (remember when Fred Thompson was going to be the savior?).
Whatever “success” he’s had has been due to a “control the week” tactic that he started employing after he brought the Rovians in. That’s just not a great strategy for running a campaign, particularly when you are controlling the week with really stupid negative ads, like the Paris Hilton ad.
Remember when we were being told that the Republicans were the party of ideas? They should have been able to campaign on those ideas, if they every had any. I’d say that they were bankrupt when it comes to ideas, but they never had bank to begin with.
I have to think that for a lot of moderates, imagery of McCain supporters screaming “niger” and “terrorist” about Obama might make them think that they don’t want to support the same party as them.
First of all, they’re in different houses, so you can’t say Obama voted with Pelosi ever. Harry Reid, maybe. Second, the Dems are more trusted on the things people care about now. If you look into the details of the polls on Congress, you’ll see the big negatives are for the Republicans, not the Dems. Pelosi does get some for not pushing bills through more. The public voted the Republicans out of their majority in 2006 for a reason, and they know who has been blocking the bills they want to see.
McCain has had bad luck with the economy, but he brought it on himself. We knew in August things were iffy, but he chose Palin to satisfy his base instead of Romney who’d have been able to speak knowingly about the crisis. He let himself get stampeded into satisfying the right wing fruitcakes instead of the independents, and this is the result. His other problem is that the bankruptcy of Republican economics is now clear. His talk of the need for regulation is not going to be trusted, based on his history, Republicans are not trusted to rein in Wall Street and help Main Street, and he both encouraged those against the bail out and supported it. When you are all over the place, it is hard to have a good campaign.
It sounds like he has lost control, and is changing his mind day to day based on whoever he listens to last. Not at all surprising he’s down.
