I read a headline on Huffington Post - I believe - that said yesterday was "the day that McCain lost the Presidency". I think it's true to say that it was the day the McCain campaign said it thinks it's losing the race.
This is so Ferraro-like.
There were so many safe choices... Biden-like choices.
But this is such a huge risk. It's an unnecessary risk in the case of a leading candidate.
I wonder if John McCain went through the following thought process.
He's told by his Rove-heads that he has to go after Obama hard but subtle based on his race. He says he can't do that. They tell him that they're afraid he can't win. He says, lemme try to make a splash with my Veep selection.
If so, then good for you Senator McCain.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
WATCHING LASTNIGHT...
I tried to think of it from the point of view of a racist who doesn’t think he’s a racist, i.e. many white Americans. I’m talking about the people who you’d never hear saying, “I’ll never vote for a black man” but instead would say, “he certainly thinks a lot of himself (uppity)” or “I don’t think America is ready for Barack Obama (I’m not ready for a black guy). And this is what I came up with:
The MLK stuff early in the evening (with John Lewis and the MLK children) sounded like race-based politics which is the reason most Afro American politicians can’t win offices beyond localities with Afro American populations.
The speech itself was pitch perfect, but before the speech, I figure that a closet racist would have been stopped dead in his tracks at the pictures of a white man and a black child, a white woman and a black man. I think that even more amazing than the 45th anniversary of the King speech is the idea that miscegenation laws weren’t struck down until a few years after that: Barack Obama was the product of a marriage that was illegal in many states. To me, THAT’S a stop-dead-in-your-tracks fact.
So anyway I wasn’t sure that the folks Obama might like to reach (the people who will tell a pollster and their friends that they don’t have a problem with a black man, but won’t pull the lever for one) might not have gotten to the speech.
But then, on the other hand, many of those people are died-in-the-wool Republicans. So who knows?
One thing that the primaries showed though was this: Obama did best in states with huge black populations (Alabama) and tiny black populations (Washington state). The states with large black populations in large cities (Ohio, Pennsylvania) were the places where he had a harder time. So he might end up having to make a new coalition of states to win: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, Illinois and a couple of plain states, a couple of southern states, a good showing in the Mountain states (Colorado, NM and Montana) and the West Coast, forgetting Ohio and Michigan and, maybe, Wisconsin and Missouri.
But the real truth for me is this: I just can’t see how McCain can do it. I know, I know…he’s pulled even lately. But can he hold it? Does he have any more arrows in his quiver? What’s he got to work with? What record can he run on now? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that Iraq can only hurt him now. If Iraq succeeds then it’s less of an issue and Obama’s plan looks more and more workable. Iraq only gets back in the news if things go bad, and then McCain’s surge just looks like a stop-gap for failure. And the economy? He just isn’t up to talk about the task and his ideas are pretty much “of the past”. I thought those were two pretty effective points that Obama made last night: that McCain’s ideas are “the past” (which makes him sound, well, old) and that McCain isn’t “up to the task” (both old AND ineffective).
Those, to me, were the Obama equivalent of the GOP trope that Obama is a “celebrity” i.e. “uppity”.
And let’s not forget Gustav...man there’s nothing worse for McCain than to have New Orleans threatened by a hurricane. That to me is the equivalent of 1980 when the anniversary of the hostages before the election seemed to remind a lot of people that Carter hadn’t gotten them out. Gustav is a little less direct, but still it puts “Katrina’ back in American minds. Anderson Cooper et al will be in New Orleans all weekend reporting on the coming deluge. It just might wind up raining real hard on McCain’s parade.
The MLK stuff early in the evening (with John Lewis and the MLK children) sounded like race-based politics which is the reason most Afro American politicians can’t win offices beyond localities with Afro American populations.
The speech itself was pitch perfect, but before the speech, I figure that a closet racist would have been stopped dead in his tracks at the pictures of a white man and a black child, a white woman and a black man. I think that even more amazing than the 45th anniversary of the King speech is the idea that miscegenation laws weren’t struck down until a few years after that: Barack Obama was the product of a marriage that was illegal in many states. To me, THAT’S a stop-dead-in-your-tracks fact.
So anyway I wasn’t sure that the folks Obama might like to reach (the people who will tell a pollster and their friends that they don’t have a problem with a black man, but won’t pull the lever for one) might not have gotten to the speech.
But then, on the other hand, many of those people are died-in-the-wool Republicans. So who knows?
One thing that the primaries showed though was this: Obama did best in states with huge black populations (Alabama) and tiny black populations (Washington state). The states with large black populations in large cities (Ohio, Pennsylvania) were the places where he had a harder time. So he might end up having to make a new coalition of states to win: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, Illinois and a couple of plain states, a couple of southern states, a good showing in the Mountain states (Colorado, NM and Montana) and the West Coast, forgetting Ohio and Michigan and, maybe, Wisconsin and Missouri.
But the real truth for me is this: I just can’t see how McCain can do it. I know, I know…he’s pulled even lately. But can he hold it? Does he have any more arrows in his quiver? What’s he got to work with? What record can he run on now? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that Iraq can only hurt him now. If Iraq succeeds then it’s less of an issue and Obama’s plan looks more and more workable. Iraq only gets back in the news if things go bad, and then McCain’s surge just looks like a stop-gap for failure. And the economy? He just isn’t up to talk about the task and his ideas are pretty much “of the past”. I thought those were two pretty effective points that Obama made last night: that McCain’s ideas are “the past” (which makes him sound, well, old) and that McCain isn’t “up to the task” (both old AND ineffective).
Those, to me, were the Obama equivalent of the GOP trope that Obama is a “celebrity” i.e. “uppity”.
And let’s not forget Gustav...man there’s nothing worse for McCain than to have New Orleans threatened by a hurricane. That to me is the equivalent of 1980 when the anniversary of the hostages before the election seemed to remind a lot of people that Carter hadn’t gotten them out. Gustav is a little less direct, but still it puts “Katrina’ back in American minds. Anderson Cooper et al will be in New Orleans all weekend reporting on the coming deluge. It just might wind up raining real hard on McCain’s parade.
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