Why do you think McCain lost?

baklawa

baklawa

New member
I know everyone probably has election fatigue, and maybe it's too soon to analyze this, but what are your thoughts on this?  I can say right now that I was honestly worried when McCain entered this race.  He was the one republican I really thought had a good shot at beating us.  Despite the fact that he isn't well-liked by the base of the republican party, I thought in the end they would hold their nose and vote for him.  Add in the independents who he had a good chance of attracting, and that had me quite anxious. 

So here are my thoughts on why his campaign failed:

1.  SARAH PALIN:  I truly believe she had a major role in his loss.  That pick was completely political, aimed at the "Hillary voters" that his campaign mistakenly thought were up for grabs.  Yes, she energized his base, but like I said, I really think they would have come through for him in the end anyway.  She was a transparent pandering tactic, a very polarizing and mean-spirited person who's pick back-fired badly.  Women cringed at the thought of her being the first female VP, a position she was completely undeserving and unqualified for.  Not only did she cost him the independents but also many of the moderate and traditional republicans.

2.  Running a fear-based campaign:  Well, actually running a very erratic, poorly-organized campaign, with no consistent or clear message.  It kept changing.  But the fear-mongering, while I realize it's been a winning strategy in the past couple of elections, it has worn thin.  And when push comes to shove and Americans are seeing their wallets hit hard and their retirements disappearing, suddenly someone's name or race doesn't matter as much anymore.

3.  Bush and the economy:  Bush was the anchor around his neck and his support of him was something he just couldn't explain away.  The economic collapse was the final nail in his coffin.
 
I think it boils down to him being a Republican. After enduring the Bush administration, I think the world wanted a change (like with our elections, over a decade of Howard, whoever was going to run against him was going to win), that and Palin.
 
I've said it a thousand times:  a dead tree branch would have beat a republican this year.

Oh, and Sarah Palin.

Oh, and Republicans have completely lost touch and their minds.
 
Renee said:
I think it boils down to him being a Republican. After enduring the Bush administration, I think the world wanted a change (like with our elections, over a decade of Howard, whoever was going to run against him was going to win), that and Palin.
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I have my own bias here, as everyone else does, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Reasons why McCain lost:

#1.  The modern day GOP is a joke.
#2.  The modern day GOP is a joke.
#3.  The traditional GOP ground troops are primarily conservatives who would not and could not, get excited by McCain.
#4.  George Bush.
#5.  The modern day GOP is a joke.

That about covers it.  I think Romney really could have taken Obama, but we will never know.  Now the real question is when does Bobby Jindal announce that he is running in 2012??  If you libs don't know about him, you better study up.  He's coming.
 
John_5_24 said:
That about covers it.  I think Romney really could have taken Obama, but we will never know.  Now the real question is when does Bobby Jindal announce that he is running in 2012??  If you libs don't know about him, you better study up.  He's coming.
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Nasha are you serious ... this guy?

200px-Bobby_Jindal%2C_official_109th_Congressional_photo.jpg
 
Here's an article in the paper today:

Four reasons why America went for Obama

The old politics has been swept away because the voters themselves have changed: they are richer, smarter and less white

Daniel Finkelstein

In the late summer of 2004 I sat down for dinner with a friend who was running the Republican Senate campaign in Illinois. He looked disconsolate. Things were not going well.

The Republicans hadn't had much luck with their candidate. Their first nominee had been forced to stand down when his wife accused him of taking her to sex clubs with a view to having sex in public. The man who succeeded him was a hardline Christian who declared that Jesus would not support a Democrat and attacked the Vice-President's lesbian daughter for being a ?selfish hedonist?.

Strangely, however, that wasn't why my friend believed they were being routed. The real reason was that the Democratic candidate was brilliant, flawless, a rock star, a phenomenon. And that was when I first heard the name of Barack Obama, now President Elect.

One reading of this election is that it has been an ordinary contest transformed by an extraordinary candidate. America remains the same, runs this theory. It is still an innately conservative nation. The reason this election has been different - and has ended up with the victory of such an apparently unlikely man - is because of the talents and failings of the candidates involved.

This is not a theory I accept. This election has turned out as it did because it needed to. The emergence of Barack Obama only happened, only could have happened, because America is changing profoundly. This was not a landmark election because it featured exceptional candidates. It featured exceptional candidates because it was a landmark election.

Here's how America has changed:

The American people are becoming, literally, a different people.

The most obvious change exposed by this election is in attitudes to race. Little more than 40 years ago Barack Obama would have found it hard to be served lunch in a restaurant, let alone be US president.

In 1962 Alabama Democrats chose George Wallace as their candidate for governor and a few months later he was sworn in, standing on the gold star placed on the spot where, a century earlier, Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. And Wallace had this to say: ?I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.?

Segregation did not last for ever. It did not even outlast George Wallace. And in 2008 Alabama Democrats chose Barack Obama for president.

The traditional politics of white America are being tranformed. The country is changing demographically, rapidly and visibly. US Census Bureau figures suggest that, by 2042, white Americans will be in a minority.

Karl Rove, George Bush's strategist, has long been convinced that the Republicans had to co-opt the Hispanic community or the party would suffer badly in future. That is one reason why, against the instincts of his party, Mr Bush supported a liberal policy on immigration, one that John McCain backed too.

America will never be the same again, because Americans won't be the same.

The world is changing and with it America's place in the world.

America remains the greatest single power in the world, yet the rise of China, the new belligerence of Russia and the wealth of the Gulf set this election in a very different context to its predecessors.

In this election America was not looking simply for a candidate able to command its forces as it enjoyed undisputed hegemony. It was more anxious than that. It was looking for a leader, like Mr Obama, who could command and might deserve the respect of the world.

The crisis in the financial markets only added to that feeling. For the first time in a generation the free market ideal and its advocates were on the back foot.

American politics is being captured by the rising middle class.

For 40 years American politics has been shaped by the split in the Democratic Party over civil rights. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, launched at the end of the 1960s, was to bring over to the Republicans disaffected voters from the segregationist states. It was almost completely successful.

Democratic presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy had united the liberal North with the poor and dispossessed whites of the deep South. After the Civil Rights Act this link was broken. And Democrats struggled without this source of southern support.

Yet slowly what one might term a mass chattering class has emerged to make a northern liberal candidate like Mr Obama viable as they had not been since Kennedy. A record number of Americans now complete high school or go to college. There are 7.3 million American millionaires, and more than half the country now considers itself middle class and is working less and enjoying more leisure time. Even to be competitive with these voters the Republicans had to select an unconventional candidate. And still he lost.

We have reached the end of the Southern Strategy and that changes American politics profoundly.

The conventional Republican agenda has stopped working.

The big themes of Republican politics - cut income tax, fight crime, reform social security, outlaw abortion, support marriage - no longer cut it politically. The Democrat tunes play better.

Tax cutting has lost its edge because 29 million Americans pay no income tax at all and because the Democrats have learnt how to blunt the message. Success has made crime less of a preoccupation. And the desperate need for Republicans to win votes among women makes their stance on abortion a serious problem.

The Republicans were forced to select a maverick because they did not have an electable mainstream Republican candidate. This was because the mainstream Republican agenda is no longer a winner.

Welcome to a new American president. Welcome to a new American politics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article5084046.ece
 
But I am sure we all agree that McCain is a very decent person, and would have made a very good president guys.

I hope the Republicans learn from this and regroup, just like the Democrats did after 8 years of retrying.

ASHOOR
 
America is liberal.  Indeed, the world is liberal.  Republicans held power for 8 years because of 9-11 and 2 wars.  End of story.  The line from the story is correct:  America is changing, literally.  Fear mongering and doddering old idiots talking about "flat taxes" and "back in the good old days of 'real America'" doesn't cut it anymore.  

The generation that remembers the 1950's when women and blacks "knew their place" are dying.  Thank goodness.

The Republicans must change and move away from the far right, and let go of their "religious" base, if they every want to see the White House again.  Otherwise, they will simply need to disband and start over.
 
waleeta said:
America is liberal.  Indeed, the world is liberal.  Republicans held power for 8 years because of 9-11 and 2 wars.  End of story.  The line from the story is correct:  America is changing, literally.  Fear mongering and doddering old idiots talking about "flat taxes" and "back in the good old days of 'real America'" doesn't cut it anymore.  

The generation that remembers the 1950's when women and blacks "knew their place" are dying.  Thank goodness.

The Republicans must change and move away from the far right, and let go of their "religious" base, if they every want to see the White House again.  Otherwise, they will simply need to disband and start over.
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You think so Waleeta. Don't you think that if Obama's presidency doesn't go as well as the voters had hoped for, is all it takes for the Republicans to be back? You are making it seem as if nothing will work for Republicans unless they completely change. To most democrats, it was a failed presidency from Bush that got them to vote for Obama, and not because the Democrats offered something completely new and radical. Just vote for the sake of change.

ASHOOR
 
No, Ashoor, the Republican party must change.  End of story.  It will have little to do with Obama's Presidency.  The Republican party is an outdated concept.  Progress, or disband.  Period.

The United States is done tolerating the far Right with their insanity the last 8 years.

And absolutely, NO.  It was not a failed Bush that Obama won.  If that were the case, Kerry would have won in 2004.  This was because Obama is a better leader.  This is because Democrats have better policies.  This is because people wanted to vote FOR OBAMA, rather than just AGAINST McCain/Bush.
 
Well I will give you some of that, but that is not the entire story. And again, at the end of the day, it is what a president will do that matters and not what party he belongs to. Sure I like Conservatives/Republicans, but if Obama is the better president, then I am all for it. And if he does indeed deliver on his thousand and one promice, I believe he will be relected again in 2012.

But make no mistake about it, the Republicans will be back and strong. And no, they won't come back as Liberals. They will come back as Republicans, but obviously with new ideas.

ASHOOR
 
Republicans didn't just lose the Presidency.

They were beaten badly in the Senate and House.

People are tired of them.  They are useless.  Outdated.  Boring.
 
During the Reagan years Canada had a conservative prime minister "Mulroney" that people did not think could loose. Offcourse people got fed up with his administration and policies and voted him out unanilomusly (just like what is happening now in the states).

Liberals were voted in (in my view they did more damage to the country). People said the conservatives will never come to power.

We fast forward now to 2008 and behold the conservatives are in power and the liberals are gone and just got voted back in again for another term. Liberals losing seats everywhere. No one is giving them hope in taking power again.

My point is: Liberals will come back to lead in Canada as will the Republicans in the states. Not for another 8 years though.

 
Juicy campaign gossip!  :lol:  From the "How He Did It, 2008" edition (they do one every election cycle and it's always fascinating) in the upcoming issue of Newsweek.  It's a behind-the-scenes account of the presidential election produced by a special team of reporters working for more than a year on an embargoed basis and detached from the weekly magazine and Newsweek.com. Everything the project team learns is kept confidential until the day after the polls close.

Among the other revelations from the special project:

1.  The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

2. On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain's core group of advisers?Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons?met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had "a pulse."

3. The Obama campaign's New Media experts created a computer program that would allow a "flusher"?the term for a volunteer who rounds up nonvoters on Election Day?to know exactly who had, and had not, voted in real time. They dubbed it Project Houdini, because of the way names disappear off the list instantly once people are identified as they wait in line at their local polling station.

4. Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

5. McCain also was reluctant to use Obama's incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a "celebrity" ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).

6. Obama was never inclined to choose Sen. Hillary Clinton as his running mate, not so much because she had been his sometime bitter rival on the campaign trail, but because of her husband. Still, as Hillary's name came up in veep discussions, and Obama's advisers gave all the reasons why she should be kept off the ticket, Obama would stop and ask, "Are we sure?" He needed to be convinced one more time that the Clintons would do more harm than good. McCain, on the other hand, was relieved to face Sen. Joe Biden as the veep choice, and not Hillary Clinton, whom the McCain camp had truly feared.

7. McCain was dumbfounded when Congressman John Lewis, a civil-rights hero, issued a press release comparing the GOP nominee with former Alabama governor George Wallace, a segregationist infamous for stirring racial fears. McCain had devoted a chapter to Lewis in one of his books, "Why Courage Matters," and had so admired Lewis that he had once taken his children to meet him.

8. On the night she officially lost the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a long and friendly phone conversation with McCain. Clinton was actually on better terms with McCain than she was with Obama. Clinton and McCain had downed shots together on Senate junkets; they regarded each other as grizzled veterans of the political wars and shared a certain disdain for Obama as flashy and callow.

9. At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.   :blink:

10. The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me ? answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."
 
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