McCain dead in polls -- must go negative, use race
People are frightened by his anger, confused by his hourly tactical shifts and lack of consistency, alarmed by his age and apparent ill health. And his party is closely associated with disasterously bad statesmanship.
I predict that all we'll hear from him for 30 days are variations on the theme: "Obama is black." Honor, schmonor.
The Guardian article doesn't say that, neither do the Republican leaders quoted. But that's what he's got, when it's all said and done. Most indpendent whites aren't patient enough to wade through Illinois gubenatorial politics or learn who Bill Ayres is.
But lots of them don't like black people.
Republicans are urging John McCain to adopt more aggressive tactics against Barack Obama amid fears that the White House is slipping away from them....
Although McCain has been pumping out negative ads throughout August and September, Republican state leaders and officials want to see him becoming even more personal, exploiting Obama's links with figures he knew in Chicago. These include: William Ayers, a former member of Weather Underground, a group involved in a 1970s bombing campaign in the US; the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former pastor; and Tony Rezko, the land developer convicted of fraud and bribery earlier this year who had contributed to his campaign funds.
Comments
Turn that frown upside down, buttercup, because your fears aren't really justified by the article or what we see happening in the campaign.
To my read, the article mostly said that McCain is losing this race because he fucked up on picking a Veep, stuck his dick in the mashed potatoes during the bail-outs talks, and thinks Spain is a radical terrorist hotspot--and has thus lost the support of Republicans (aside: this matches my experience: All I'm hearing from friends and family right now is that the traditionally Dem ones are pumped to vote for Obama, and the traditionally Republican ones are refusing to vote because they think McCain is a dumb ass. All of them think Tina Fey is hilarious, and really wish she were the actual Republican VP candidate.)
And McCain has just pulled out of Michigan ( http://www.poormojo.org/pmjadaily/archives/023254.php ) -- which is arguably the easiest swing state to turn on race issues: we're among the most racially divided states in the Union, with a majority white population that fears a majority black, epically mismanaged industrial husk. If he was going to race-bait to win, he'd do it here.
I love that picture, though. Sums up this run at the office without the thousand words. Nice.
Posted by: dave-o | October 3, 2008 07:25 AM
What happened to McCain?
No, seriously, can someone explain how far he's fallen?
After the 2000 election he went on...I can't remember the exact show, but it was one the 24 hour "news" channels...and talked about the tactics that the Bush campaign had used in the primary to kill his campaign, and how it had really hurt him, on a personal level, and how he would have never stooped to such things.
At the time, my wife (then girlfriend) and I both thought, "that's one republican I might vote for in a general election...depending on who the Dems were running."
Now...
McCain's sense of self entitlement appears, to me, on par with Bush's. All I kept thinking in the last debate was how f'ing condescending he was being toward Obama. As if Obama's opinions/positions were wrong because they weren't McCain's.
At this moment, I can't honestly conceive of a way that McCain can win...but about four years ago there wasn't a way that I could conceive of Bush winning so...
Posted by: kilian | October 3, 2008 09:54 AM