3 posts tagged “joe”

All of the Republican rhetoric of the past few months stomped out by the McCain campaign.  I will get to that in a minute, but I am not sure what will be worse for the Republican Party a loss in a week or an unlikely win.  I believe that most of the American public (excepting the most diehard Republican “fans) already had a pretty good idea about much of all of this, but I think it is simply a vindication of the media that has been taking the brunt of the blame for creating these perceptions.

In case you have not heard all of this, there are endless reports of dissention in the McCain ranks centering on Governor Palin.  The hero of the Republican party is now a “rogue” “diva” candidate undermining the McCain campaign.  The pride and joy of the campaign has become the poster child for the statement “Pride cometh before the fall.”

The latest episode has to do with the fact that Sarah Palin decided to write her own script and inadvertently distract attention from the campaign by not letting the clothing argument die.  The campaign over the past couple of days has drifted from “The Testing of Barack Obama” and “Joe the Plumber” to “Sarah the Rogue Diva.”

CNN has been reporting that members of the McCain camp are saying she has no relationships of trust with anyone in the campaign or even her own family.  That she sees herself as the beginning and end of all wisdom.  She is being described using words such as “diva” and “rogue” and on and on.

That however, is not the serious statements, those are just the entertainment to warm us up for the real bombs.  We all remember the Katie Couric interview and some other early appearances where she looked lost.  Then, after all of the talk about Senator Obama as some kind of rock star, the main defense for her presence on the campaign trail is her popularity.   Then came all of the “media bias” talk about the sexism and the evil “leftwing” media trying to paint her as someone who has no idea what is going on and has no business running for vice president.

Now suddenly, sources of many of these arguments in her defense, are turning one-eighties from within the McCain Campaign.  There are reports that members of the McCain camp are saying that she had a lack of understanding on some fundamental key issues on a level one person called “dramatic.”  Another described her as the hardest candidate to get up to speed in history.

The rhetoric is still there about how she is being picked on or that people are being mean and sexist, and on and on.  Let me spell this out.  THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HER BEST POLITICALLY ARE NOW SAYING THESE THINGS!

Again the Republican Party is doing the worst job of damage control imaginable.  The polls show that people believe she is not qualified and is hurting Senator McCain, the media has been leaning that way, Republican Party members have one by one been leaning that direction, she is found guilty of previous ethics violations while on the campaign, she holds a rally for herself a week before the election when the actual candidate is behind in all polls, and now the leadership within the campaign is verifying what the public has been suspecting all along. 

The weird part is the Republican folks are all over the media still rallying support around her far more than anything they are doing for Senator John McCain.   

It is like a ship with a hole in it.  The crew keeps trying to patch the hole but on the other side of the ship there is one crew member who keeps cutting holes on the other side of the ship.  The crew keeps having to patch the new holes and is constantly being distracted from patching the original hole.  The ship is sinking and now the “rogue” crewmember keeps punching more holes in the ship.   If you were on the ship, what would you do with that crewmember?  Apparently in the Republican camp has decided that the solution to the holes is to blame the mean people on the other boats.

The problem here is not policy and that is why nobody is focusing on policy, the problem is “WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING IN THE REPUBLICAN CAMP?”  This is the question that those of us who are not Republican are wondering and that is what the media is covering.  Most of us are satisfied that Senator Joe Biden is not the best candidate in the world, but he is savvy enough to be a vice-president.  He is no longer interesting. 

But boy, when you spend all of your time getting your clips on television attacking somebody and complaining you turn even the person who is actually in the lead into the underdog and should not wonder why so many are so interested in seeing these Republican candidates beaten. 

I have just viewed the last debate and watched the polls.  I was very impressed by Senator McCain’s performance and was overtaken with interest by the fact that some issues actually were addressed. 

Senator John McCain came on strong but started to seem a little cheap and gimmicky to me with this “Joe Plumber” nonsense.  The first half of the debate almost unanimously all agree was a win for McCain and probably the high point of his campaign.  I was kind of surprised at how good his performance was but on the other hand thought it was about time considering all of his experience.  Senator Obama seemed to be sticking to the plan of any candidate with that big of a lead at this point:  Just don’t mess up.

Then we hit the Acorn and Ayers conversation which seemed to energize Senator Obama and to scramble Senator McCain’s footing.  From there he seemed angry and actually kind of grumpy from that point until his (very strong) close.

I do not agree with the polls I have seen in that I think it was either a tie or a very close win for Senator Obama.  The pools all gave a landslide victory to Senator Obama.

I was pondering why and was confronting the reality.  Senator McCain needed a huge game changer and did not even come close to getting it and I am not sure that he (or those in his campaign) has any idea how to do that at this point.  The polls probably already reflect the reality of how the voters are leaning.  The most important statistic I saw was the over fifty percent of the independent voters that gave the debate to Senator Obama.  That may be the backbreaker.

I do have one insight to offer.  I noticed in the previous debates that Senator McCain seemed to be focused on the message of I am good and Obama is bad while Senator Obama was able to make similar statements seemed to have a message that said I am thinking about you out there watching on television.  That alone will adjust the statistics and give people the feeling that there is a better connection with Senator Obama.  That might explain the polls where people seem to be trusting Senator Obama on things that nobody thought anyone would trust him on.  I think there was less of that this time, but far more of Senator McCain’s temper which seemed to be barely held at bay for much of the second half of the debate.  One channel was keeping the camera on both men when one was speaking and his reactions were almost disturbing at times.

What do you do now if you are John McCain and there is nineteen days left, you have just lost three debates in a row, the polls are beginning to pummel you, and the CNN map thing says Senator Obama already has enough electoral votes to win the election?

First, you stop the attack campaign; there have rarely been worse results for any campaign tactic as we have seen for this over that past few weeks.

Next, I would have my economic advisors working night and day for some earth shattering plans and solutions for the economy that I could introduce by this weekend that would make economists say “Wow, what a plan!”

I would educate Governor Sarah Palin on the new plan and have her talk about it and how it is better than Senator Obama’s plan.

The biggest thing to do is to study the tapes of this debate and do more of whatever he did in the first half of the debate and less of (if not stop altogether) whatever he did in the second half of the debate.

There is still time, but if the campaign stays on the same course I fear watching the McCain campaign might be a bit like watching the Titanic sink in slow motion.  Then of course there is still the outside chance that Senator Obama could make some terrible mistake and blow the whole deal.

All said, this was a bit better of a debate, but I fear that again Senator McCain did not come close to doing enough and may have missed any chance of winning (plus I have to admit he looked like a case study in beginning anger management).

Maybe he should make friends with Chris Buckley and possibly get him his job back at his father’s paper.

The polls have been drifting in the direction of Senator Hillary Clinton, but she has another problem, the superdelegates have been drifting Senator Barack Obama’s way.

Just as the polls began to reflect the past few weeks of bad press that Sen. Obama seemed to be a magnet for, another perceived Clinton family ally, Former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew, publicly switched his support in Democratic primary from Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama.

In looking at and listening to the various polls over the past few days, I began to wonder;  “What if the entire situation completely reverses and Sen. Clinton manages to pull of the popular vote and Sen. Obama overturns the popular vote with the votes of the ever so mysterious “superdelegates?  Is there the potential for as much of a collapse of the Democratic Party?” 

In looking at the passion (often communicated as anger or rudeness) of the more vocal of Sen. Clinton’s supporters, I would have to say at least as much potential. 

The truth is that such a landslide of a turn in the popular vote is not as likely as the current polls suggest as they reflect the shift that took place with all of the bad press Se. Obama picked up during the Pennsylvania primary but none of the events surrounding the reemergence of a certain friend of his named Mr. Wright.

The problem with these polls is that in most cases it takes time to collect and compile the data and by the time this data is presented to the public it is a week or two behind.  In a race where things are happening so fast and the public opinion is shifting so fast the polls have rarely reflected what was going on in the week we are seeing the results.   That is why the results have been so surprising every time we have heard them.    These polls are sort of a crystal ball that can see into the past, but cannot see the present and in reality have little bearing on the future.

I suspect that Sen. Obama’s speech this week, completely distancing and in reality divorcing himself from a certain Mr. Wright (I refuse to honor this man with the title “reverend”) probably helped him in the public view particularly with his rare showing of emotion, but with this election year, who knows. 

The truth is however, that if Sen. Obama keeps eroding Sen. Clinton’s superdelegate support, her miraculous resurgence will be reduced to a blip on the radar screen of history. 

I have found it intriguing that right about the time Sen. Clinton started to make a comeback some of her seemingly guaranteed superdelegate supporters suddenly began shifting their support to Sen. Obama.  What is going on behind the scenes with the Washington insiders that we are not hearing about?  I am left wondering with many questions:

Is there something about Sen. Obama’s electability that the insiders can see that the rest of us cannot? 

Is Sen. Obama’s camp making some sort of deal behind the scenes that we are not hearing about? 

Is Sen. Obama more clearly the better choice for some reason that is not yet clear to the general population? 

Is there some terrible problem with Sen. Clinton that the general public does not yet know about? 

Are the scare tactics and public attacks on those who have defected or threatened to defect to the Obama camp starting to “turn off” her supporters?

The next two or three primaries probably really are the big ones.  I know that every primary for the past two or three months has been billed as “the big one,” but Sen. Obama could put away Sen. Clinton’s chances by simply winning those states and getting some major superdelegate supporters.  Sen. Clinton, on the other hand, could build a huge case for her statements that Sen. Obama is not electable by winning several states in a row as soon as some bad press came out about him. 

By next Tuesday, when we will be watching the next primaries, the effects of Sen. Obama’s speech on Monday will have settled in.  Was it strong enough and soon enough to stop his eroding popularity, or did it have little effect.  That is the biggest indicator that we will all see next week.

If you want to know where we really stand as a country on the candidates today just wait a week or two and look at the polling results.  Of course, by then, those results may not matter much, but at least your will know.