First and foremost, let’s all understand that this is an opinion, not an analysis. That said, fire at will.
Why has this Presidential election become such a circus? Because Barak Obama and the Democrats had no election strategy planned out past the convention, that’s why. Long before Obama became a force to be reckoned with the Democrats believed with plenty of justification that they were going to sweep into the White House and solidify control of the House and Senate. The Republican Party had been pretty thoroughly repudiated in 2006, Hillary had the air of inevitability about her and when Obama started being a serious contender for the Democratic nomination the Democrats were looking at ‘History In The Making’ no matter how the primaries turned out.
Realistically, had Hillary won the nomination and selected Barak Obama and the VP candidate, they might still be looking at that scenario… and the same problem. The Democratic “50 State Strategy†was not supposed to be a campaign. It was supposed to be a 60+ day long Victory Lap, not a hard slog to the election. McCain was supposed to Bob Dole his way through the campaign, select some boring White Guy as VP, get eaten alive and slink away into retirement. He was supposed to be abandoned by the Republican base, fail to ignite interest in the Independents and lose by double digits in an Electoral landslide of Reaganesque proportions.
All the Democrats had to do was show up. And that’s all they planned to do. Oh, the Senate and House races would get lots of attention, make no mistake, but the presidency was sewn up and the only question was how long would the Republican Party survive as an organization after the election. It shows in how poorly the Obama camp and the party in general has reacted to changes on the ground. They simply were not prepared for that old geezer McCain to actually put up a fight.
The Democratic Party was living a fantasy. When that fantasy was shattered they did not pick up the pieces and prepare to fight it out, instead they clung desperately to what they felt had to be true, casting about for some magic bullet they could use to destroy the opposition so they could get back to their celebration. Some of them went bat-sh*t crazy, some of them just closed their eyes and tried to wish the evil vision of a resurgent GOP campaign away and some of them stepped back, looked at their party and their candidate and started to believe they could lose.
There is still time for the Democrats to recover- it is not even October yet. But they have to start NOW, and so far too many of them are locked in that state of denial.
{ 22 comments }
J.A.
Your first paragraph was perfectly clear, but I can’t figure out the rest of your message. ;)
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW! Terrorists!
CC-
I knew you would say that…
heh…
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW! Terrorists!
Why has this Presidential election become such a circus? Because Barak Obama and the Democrats had no election strategy planned out past the convention, that’s why.
Ok. Stop right there. This is completely wrong. Obama had an election strategy planned. As usual it was an election strategy based on talking about the issues and his program proposals. John McCain does not want to talk about issues. He wants the election to be about character and values, not issues.
McCain’s campain team has been very good a winning news cycles and getting the Obama team responding to his attacks rather than attacking him. He has been pushing the envelope of truthfulness quit a bit. The MSM has started to notice this, and has finally gotten up the courage to say out loud that at lot of the McCain charges are just not true. It remains to be seen if that will ever reflect back on people preceptions of John McCain’s character and values.
I think there’s some weight to his opinion. It did seem like it was going to be a shoe-in for either Democratic candidate. I have overheard many people comment about the fact that Bush’s approval ratings are so low that there’s no way people will vote in another Republican… blah, blah, blah. If your game plan is simply to show up and your opponent puts forth even half an effort, you will lose.
Mikeca has a point also, but we must remember that fabricating and spinning information into an attack is a standard tactic in a campaign. If you are not prepared to deal with this tactic you do not need to be in politics.
mike:
J.A. overstates his point and exaggerates the Obama campaign’s overconfidence, but events in the past few weeks do seem to support the idea that Obama’s plan past the convention was weak at best. If he had one, the Palin thing seems to have knocked it into the wastebasket, and he’s taken far longer to come up with a new one than I would be happy about if I were an Obama supporter.
Obama asked us to judge his readiness to be President based on how he has run his campaign. OK, if we do that it sure looks like the first serious obstacle he encountered knocked him off his game for, what, two solid weeks? And his only substantive response was to go aggressively on the attack in such a way that his efforts backfired badly at first?
Gee, I hope that’s not how he deals with Russia.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW! Terrorists!
Caution:
McK is thinking outside the box, again.
What if all we saw of Sarah Palin was:
A bunch of American flags,
A teleprompter,
A person very ill at ease,
That had to take a teleprompter and his flags to a rodeo crowd,
and then
attended a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills, California
with guest singer Barbra Streisand and the admission tickets were $ 28,500 per person.
Does that sound like the kind of person you would vote for ?
The real problem is the "Bush 2.0" strategy, which was assumed to be a perfect strategy, ran into McCain. Obama’s political strategy and talking-point thrust has consistently been to focus all discussion of McCain and his policies back on Bush.
Given that the "Bush 2.0" strategy isn’t working too well, Obama will need a more affirmative strategy that actually presents how he’ll be a better President than McCain.
As for "the issues", Dems always dream that policy-wonkery will win elections. It rarely does – or at least not that I can remember. My feeling is that Americans know intuitively how hard it is for a President to get stuff through Congress, so any initiatives discussed during the campaign will bear little resemblance to their final form as they grind through the legislative sausage factory – if they even make it out of committee.
So, "issues" talk is ignored in favor of whether the President actually has the strength of conviction and political skill/ability to actually get stuff through Congress, which is ultimately a question of character and toughness as least as much as "competence".
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John McCain does not want to talk about issues. He wants the election to be about character and values, not issues. -Mikeca
Good. What the issues are right now is not what they will be in a year or four, so they’re a useless metric. Character and values are everything.
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See, now that you fixed the post, my first comment doesn’t make sense any more.
Sigh, well I’m sure there are plenty here who say that NONE of my comments make sense. ;)
Issues schmissues, let’s talk about toasters for every American. (that’s a Joe Biden reference for those who don’t get it…)
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So, you’re implying that McCain is weak on the issues? I guess that would mean Obama must be weak on character and values then, huh?
I’ll let the GOP know they can expect you to vote Republican this year.
JLBussey is right. Issues come and go. Character and values inform one’s position on issues. Know a man’s character, you’ll know how he’s likely to go on an issue.
Thank you, Mikeca, for pointing out McCain wants to talk about what really matters and Obama wants to talk about everything but.
It’s pretty clear to me that the Obama campaign was thinking about the general election, which is (amongst other things) why, once it became obvious that he had the Democratic nomination, he started doing things like going to Iraq (for the first time) and a little touring of Europe and meeting of foreign dignitaries. Which to some looked arrogant and a sort of premature victory lap, but was pretty well-designed to make the Senator at least look like he took foreign policy seriously. Which everybody acknowledges to be his weakest point.
I nevertheless think that John Eddy is correct that they didn’t expect much of a fight with McCain. They got caught flat-footed on that. Ironically, it was the same basic mistake the Bush campaign made in 2000 when McCain nearly wrested the Republican nomination from Bush.
They had a post-nomination plan. Things didn’t go the way they expected, however, as a lot of us suspected (including my nearly-always-right ex-wife by the way, who was on the record way back in the early primary season, and still is on record, that Obama cannot win in November).
Presidential elections are, and always have been, as much about character as issues. For an awful lot of Americans, character’s more important, for reasons that others have already stated in the above comments, and for other reasons as well: the fact is that this office is and always has been about far more than policy.
It’s also the case that Democrats often overplay their hand when it comes to policy, because they often seem to think that the voters "really truly" agree with them, but in fact voters are are often far more moderate (and also more independent-minded and thoughtful) than many politicians think they are; President Clinton always understood this, as well as he understood the importance of character and conviction (never mind those who said Bill Clinton lacked character and conviction; any close reading of those who were part of the administration knows that’s not true, his personal peccadillos notwithstanding).
Democrats have now picked very weak candidates two cycles in a row; they nominated Kerry almost the way that Republicans nominated Dole in 1996, in a sort of desultory way (“well there doesn’t seem to be anyone better and anyway he’s a war hero”). They got fired up about Obama but they couldn’t seem to see that his lack of experience really would bother a great many voters, and many of the party elders also made the *huge* mistake of thinking that the Hillary Clinton’s supporters would come around to Obama because they’d have nowhere else to go. Well that’s true of most staunch partisan Democrat women, but not all of them, and not women in general. There is still genuine anger and irritation over the fact that Obama not only didn’t pick Senator Clinton to be his running-mate, but his campaign actually said that they never considered asking her. What a simply enormous blunder. Yes, having the Hated Hillary on the ticket would have fired up some culturally or fiscally conservative voters, but Hillary actually got a lot of sympathy from staunch conservatives as they watched her run for President–and a ton of independents and Dem-leaning women were and still are genuinely pissed about how she was treated.
The Obama campaign seemed to see none of this coming.
And frankly, on the issues, as is so often the case, it’s increasingly difficult to tell what’s so radically different about Obama’s policy positions and McCain’s policy positions. Both campaigns are now trying to capture the center, and truly, on balance, there’s not all that much difference between them–as much as the staunch partisans would like to say it ain’t so, it is so.
Obama’s in trouble. Although it’s still a long way until November, it’s not all that long.
Dean,
I have not thanked you for teaching me so much about politics. I remember with fondness how you explained both Republicans and Democrats. I probably don’t remember exactly how this came up, but you had me look at it like a football game. Then I looked at my own values and morals and came up with being a conservative. I remember when you were a Democrat, and helped out the campaign. You did a lot of work and I admired that, and wondered what I was missing.
I still have so many questions but I try real hard to learn. I hope you and others don’t get upset with me when I ask questions. I did ask a few this week and nobody answered me so I figured they were too deeply involved with their opinions. I really understand that. I love all the commenters here and I have for six or so years now. I wish my Daddy was still alive because he would get such a kick out of me. I yell at the television, the radio and use my remote to follow several channels. I was this way over games from my hometown college. I went to basketball games, football games and shouted to the roof tops. Now, it is just me and my two kitties. They have often got very startled hearing their master yell out loud!
Values mean a lot to me. I want an honest man or woman in office. I want them to have character and integrity. I feel all those with McCain. I’ve honestly tried to listen to Obama and carefully weigh what he has to say. I would like him to come back in four or eight years from now when he has some experience under his belt.
Question:
How many times can a canidate go to a high dollar ($28,500.00) fund raiser with a lot of people that already gave to his team?
How does the general public find out who is funding Obama?
Thank you Dean, and all commenters
What is going wrong?
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Is that just my browser (I.E 7)?
lawrencema-
It is an artifactof cutting and pasting from Word 2007 into WP via Firefox 3.x. I didn’t even see it until I looked at it in IE7.
I stand by my opinion- as a whole the Democrats were woefully unprepared to wage a real campaign against a viable opponent. The rhetoric from the fringes leaves me flat and as Dean noted above, Democrats seem hell bent on one day winning an election based on wonkiness without any consideration of the candidates’ values, character or personality. It will never happen- to the best of my knowledge it has never happened in a presidential election.
The Democrats expected to spend their efforts on expanding their margin of victory and the length of the presidential candidate’s coattails, they absolutely did not ever think they would have to fight just to win.
Use the option to copy just raw text, see if that helps.
Ms. Janelle: Well Mom, all threads that go long wind up sooner or later with an unanswered question. That even happens to me. ;-)
I’m not sure what the donation limits are in general, but, those limits are on candidates who take Federal election funds to help their campaign. Obama broke his promise to take the Federal matching funds because he thought he could do better without them. I’m not sure if there are any limits to how much in donations can be accepted but it’s probably pretty high if there is any.
Anyone else know?
J.A. is pretty much right in his assertions that the Obama campaign was and has been arrogant and over-confident. The whole "fifty state strategy" is proof positive of that, as is the abandonment of that strategy as they find themselves in an actual fight.
Obama may win this election, there certainly are enough people in this country fed up with the way things are, and the Democrats have done a masterful job of sliming President Bush until the public image of the man is virtually indistinguishable from the liberal one-dimensional caricature. That will change, of course, over time, but for this election all that matters is how people view GW Bush now.
And Obama is (or was) a very compelling candidate in his own right to many people.
But whether Obama wins or loses he has already proven that his promises of "hope and change" and running a positive campaign and reaching across the aisle and all that other touchy-feely stuff was just pure political posturing.
It took him one day to go from Mr. Hope to chucking slime and innuendo with the worst of them. And he’s been doing it nonstop now for two weeks. And now that he has slowed or stopped his drop in the polls, he is learning that throwing all the mud he can find to see what sticks actually works. So look for more of the same going forward.
So the irony of this whole election is that no matter how much Obama promised a new and better way, he has not campaigned that way, and since he has asked us to judge how he will govern based on how he runs his campaign, I am forced to conclude that he will not govern that way either.
In other words, Mr. Hopey-Changey will almost certainly find himself in an administration that is just as partisan as any of our recent administrations and the end result is going to be a whole lot more of the same old same old.
In some ways I almost think it’s some sort of poetic justice to have Obama win and then have his deluded followers come to the realization that the man is just another politician and that his administration will have virtually all the same kinds of troubles that other administrations have had.
I’m not sure which will drive the Lefties to distraction more, a McCain victory, or an Obama victory which turns out to be business as usual in Washington.
Either way I predict some serious disappointment for them.
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I’m not sure there will be any such distraction with an Obama Administration. Obama isn’t just a liberal – he’s a leftist. And even if it’s business as usual, and I don’t think it will be under his watch (which isn’t a good thing), liberals are so convinced of the rightness of their cause that having him in office will be all the proof they think they need.
They’d have won the argument not because Obama changed anything, but simply because he has power.
Need proof? Look at Congress. Its not gotten a single substantive thing done being handed over to the Democrats yet you know idiots will keep voting for them. Accomplishing something isn’t the point. Obtaining and holding power is all that matters. Keeping it out of the hands of the enemy (which I am convinced too many on the left see Republicans as) is all that matters.
Kevin:
Yes and no… I read the Lefty blogs as much as I can stomach them (which isn’t that much, omigawd what a collection of vile, profane lunatics you find on KOS, Firedoglake or Huffpo. I mean these people have serious mental health issues) and on those blogs I see a lot of vitriol hurled at Congress for their inability to advance the progressive agenda. In fact one of the enduring memes on those sites is sustained apoplexy that the village idiot in the White House somehow STILL manages to thwart the right and proper goals of the Left even after the Left took control of both houses of Congress. I mean you can’t get to a 14% approval rating unless the majority of YOUR OWN PARTY is angry at you.
Obama has been beating a retreat to the middle since his coronation at Mile High Stadium and there is good reason to believe that once he is in the Oval Office he’ll start seeing things differently than he does today (see Clinton, Bill). He is smart enough, I hope, to look at Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s administrations and model his own after the one that can claim to have had SOME success, as opposed to the one that led to the Reagan Revolution in only four years.
I guess we’ll see, I still can’t see how Obama can blow this election, no matter how hard he tries. The deck has been stacked so strongly in his favor that it would be a political melt-down of historic proportions for him to lose.
Let’s get back on this subject in September of 2010 and see where we think the Obama administration has gone, and how well pleased the moonbats are by its "accomplishments."
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I have to take issue with:
"And Obama is (or was) a very compelling candidate in his own right to many people."
I’m pretty/absolutely sure that if you take skin color off the table Obama is not a good candidate, and I don’t count skin color as "in his own right" any more than any other physical attribute.Â
Obama taking Biden as his VP is a pretty clear illustration that Obama is not a change agent in any way except skin color, he is committed to the status quo as dictated by a democratic Congress. The Obama candidacy smear of the President, trying to link Bush & McCain as the same (wierd that he tried to say McCain is at odds with Bush on status of the economy), and smear of the VP pretty clearly proves Obama believes in business as usual.
I was talking to an old friend of my father’s (and my 6the grade science teacher) yesterday, he said that Freddy & Fannie were put in place in the Clinton era to make sure that people who couldn’t really afford it would be able to purchase houses. It got really lucrative, and main stream financinal institutions started jumping on the band wagon of financing high-risk loans. Finally, banks demanded a place at the table. The risk was expanded from peripheral institutions to main stream while simultaneously expanding the risk pool.  Since the underlying principle is that high risk pays off sometimes in commerce, the whole thing in retrospect seems like a house of cards.  So a big question in my mind is what part of this Obama would have stopped? Getting more money to poor people to live beyond thier fiscal means? Getting main stream financial institutions to support this?
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