Tag Archives: mccain

Election notes

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With a sweeping Democratic victory last night, our long national nightmare is finally coming to a decisive close. It’s made all the more fabulous by the fact that we’ve elected our first African-American president.

It looks like I was right: Obama wins, does so with greater than 5% margin of the popular vote, and flips a red state–Virginia.

You know how confident I was in an Obama victory? I wrote the previous post (Victory!) over lunch on Tuesday and scheduled it to automatically appear at 10pm. And it was precisely at 10pm that CBS called the race for Obama, too.

Sadly, the local chapter (are there other chapters?) of Drinking Right actually met last night, on election night. Therefore, I was not able to join them to drink on their dime and gloat a little.

I really, really want Al Franken to win in Minnesota! I’m hoping against hope that a recount pushes him over the edge.

Champagne

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Did I ever tell you my champagne bottle story from the 2004 election? I’d had this bottle of champagne in my office for six months or more. Someone had given it to me for something or other. Then on election day I took it with me on my way out of the office.

Both sides of Wisconsin avenue were lined with students: Kerry supporters on the north side and Bush supporters on the south side. I walked across to the Kerry side and approached a young man. “Are you over 21″ I asked? He said he was. I asked to see his ID and he showed it to me. (One wonders who he thought I was and what kind of trouble he was in.) As he was of legal drinking age, I pulled the bottle out of my bag and handed it to him. “For later,” I said. “When you win.”

Then I went home. Later that night I grimly reflected that the bottle of champagne likely had been used to drown sorrows rather than in celebration.

That’s why tonight I’m getting a new bottle on the way home. I’ll pop it open and toast each and every bit of good news for Democrats. Here’s hoping we need a second bottle before the night is through.

Explain it to me

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President Bush and the Republican party have controlled Washington for much of the last eight years. During those years we have begun an unnecessary war. That war has been prosecuted badly. A lot of people are dead, and it’s not clear if anything much has been accomplished in terms of our national security. The economy is circling the drain. We’re bailing out industries who overreached because of lax regulation. Unemployment has cracked 6% and may go higher. Worker productivity has risen, but no rise in middle class incomes has accompanied it. The budget deficit has reached historic highs. The federal response to hurricane Katrina was shameful. They have implemented policies of warrantless spying, secret prisons and torture. It’s not surprising, then, that our Republican president has the lowest disapproval rating in history. Similarly, 80% of the country believe we’re heading in the wrong direction. I think it is fair to say that we can now see what Republican policies bring us: economic downturn, war and an erosion of civil rights. They’ve had their shot, and nobody seems very pleased with the result.

So why is it that McCain is polling as well as he is? Can it really be that he’s so completely and effectively distanced himself from his own party and its failed policies? I do get that he’s “mavericky,” that he’s the anti-GOP Republican. But how in hell is this man defying so much gravity? What am I missing?

Sure, he’s a Vietnam war hero. (I don’t know if you knew that or not.) But other than his admirable service record, he’s not a very inspirational guy. He looks like a grumpy old man and he sounds like he’s telling us all to get off his lawn. What cartoon physics are keeping this Wile E. Coyote from plummeting to the bottom of the canyon?

I still predict an Obama win. I just wish I understood this phenomenon.

The words they used

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The New York Times published a neat graph of the words used in the speeches at the two political conventions. Have a look. So, was senator Biden dreaming? Are Democrats talking more about issues? I think he’s on to something. Who was talking more about Iraq? Who was talking more about the economy, jobs, health care and energy? Why are Republicans talking so much about God, taxes and business interests?

McCain speaks and accepts the Republican nomination

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I was really, really disappointed to see at least two protesters interrupting senator McCain in the Xcel Center. That’s simply not called for. They were hastily removed, thank goodness.

How did McCain do? Well, his delivery has improved since the last speech I watched, which isn’t saying much. I’m waiting for conservative pundits to call it “electrifying” or something. In fact, it was no more than adequate, but it was an improvement.

Message? It must be hard for a Republican to run on a platform of change when his party has been in control of Washington–house, senate and presidency–for so much of the last eight years. He himself has been in Washington for that entire time. If Republicans need change, what is it that they need change from? Themselves?

The senator has an amazing biography and I was moved afresh by stories of his military service and heroism.

If Republicans are nominating a man who thinks global warming is a serious threat that needs attention, then are they finally admitting that they have been wrong all these years? What does governor Palin think? And why wasn’t senator McCain speaking up about this years ago? Inquiring minds want to know.

He parsed his words very, very carefully when discussing Obama’s tax reform proposals. He didn’t actually say that Obama was going to raise my taxes (he won’t), but he did threaten that Obama’s tax increases would kill jobs. Same old Republican duck and weave. Yawn.

Senator McCain is a good man who has served our country for many years, but he’s the wrong guy at the wrong time. He and his party have had their chance. Look where it got us: an unnecessary and poorly conducted war, an anemic economy, people losing their homes, fuel prices choking family budgets, torture, secret prisons, an erosion of our constitutional right to privacy, and a world which views us with fear and distrust rather than admiration.

With their party in decline and America so displeased with them, I guess the Republicans needed to nominate their maverick. Their only chance is to put someone forth who has the most disagreements with the party platform and leadership.

But I ask you: is real change about electing the most mavericky member of the party that’s been in charge? Or is change electing someone from cut from an entirely different cloth? Someone from the opposing party? Someone who hasn’t had a decades-long Washington career?

Like I said, change is a tough pose to strike when you and your party have controlled Washington during our nation’s precipitous decent into it’s current state.

Palin, Obama and experience

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Sure, experience is a valid question for someone running in a presidential election. Of course it is. And, let’s face it, Obama’s resume is a bit thin as far as these things go. But that’s why he’s been getting himself out there for two frickin’ years, meeting people, campaigning, debating, issuing detailed policy positions, letting the people inspect him to determine whether he’s got the right stuff. That’s what people have to do if they don’t have lengthy records to run on, and that’s exactly as it should be.

Obama has done this, and, judging by how far he’s come, he’s done a pretty good job of assuaging concerns about his limited experience.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin. She also has a very thin resume and a very short time in government. It is incumbent upon her to deal with it as Obama has done: get out there and sell herself, experience and all. We’ll see how she does, but my gut feeling is that she ain’t no Obama.

There’s a lot of reasons I wouldn’t vote for her. Her views on abortion rights and abstinence-only sex ed come to mind. But all that aside, she truly doesn’t strike me as presidential material. And, after all, that is the single most important criteria for a vice presidential candidate: she has to be ready to be president at a moment’s notice.

To me she looks more like a PTA president than a US president.

And then there are the scandals–both personal and professional.

This is who McCain thinks is the best qualified Republican to be on his ticket? Really?

This is the beginning of the end for McSame. The selection of Palin just put him over the edge. He has officially jumped the shark and is now on a fast track to becoming a very small footnote in the Barack Obama story.

Predictions.

1. Palin won’t drop out unless another scandal erupts. And it would have to be a really nasty personal one.

2. If she did drop out the narrative would be that she didn’t want to subject her poor family to the blast furnace heat of vicious liberal hatred directed at her via the “MSM”–not that she was found to be a poorly vetted, cynically chosen, ill-qualified, scandal-ridden nightmare of a running mate.

3. She’ll likely stay. But stay or go, Obama will win the election and the popular vote by at least 5 percentage points.

Issues and “character”

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I have heard it said that if presidential elections were decided solely on issues, the Democratic candidate would win every time. The reason that Republicans often do win is because they always try to make the election about something else: Character. Perceived character, I should say, because the odds of getting an accurate assessment of someone’s character through observing a political campaign is about as likely as finding mystical enlightenment while watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island.

I haven’t seen any recent polls, but I believe the American people prefer Obama’s health care reforms over McCains. I think they also prefer his Iraq strategy, his economic plan, his tax reforms, his views on reproductive rights, and so on. If elections were chiefly about issues, Obama would have a 20 point lead over McCain right now, and he’d keep that lead right through November, winning a landslide victory.

What do you think? Which party’s policies on health care reform, education, taxes, the economy and Iraq are more in line with public opinion? Which party is sewing the most doubt about the other candidate’s character?