WORST CAMPAIGN EVER.
by Will Durst
I don’t know which is scarier: The American landscape the next President of the United States is destined to inherit, the people who will make that decision (us), or the fact that these two guys seem to want it so bad. Or do they? Did you ever think of that? Maybe John McCain is deliberately trying to throw the election. “Let me get this straight. Ten trillion in debt? Losing two wars? Tampa Bay in the World Series? Not what I envisioned when I gave this country the best five years of my life. Barack, my man. This one is all yours.”
It would explain a lot. Like why he and his people are running the worst campaign EVER. And that includes New Coke and Penn Jillette’s appearance on Dancing With the Stars. Or for you older folks: France in 39. Have you seen him lately? The GOP nominee is running around the country like an ornery troll with irritable bowel syndrome. Stamping his feet and shaking his fists and spitting and shouting and whose playbook is that a page out of? Rumplestilskin, Ross Perot or Naomi Campbell?
Loses all three debates; standing, sitting and strolling. His brother, Joe, the Brother, calls up 911 to complain about Beltway traffic. Gets asked how many houses he has and doesn’t know? Then again, who among us hasn’t made that same mistake? “Let’s see, how many houses do I have? Unh. There’s one and… no, just the one. Wait, wait, wait. Nope, my mistake, only one. Oh, I know, that doesn’t include the… oh yeah. It does. Sorry, still one.”
Recently, the Arizona Senator addressed a rally with a hearty “My fellow prisoners” instead of “my fellow citizens.” Very Manchurian Candidate. Do not flash the Queen of Diamonds at him between now and Election Day. Then, in one of his fifty most crucial states, he said, “Senator Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately, and you know, I couldn’t agree with them more.” Close, but no cigar.
The nascent Dump Palin movement has morphed into a Dump McCain groundswell. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, it’s obvious that this is the worst case of political suicide since Walter Mondale bragged in his 84 acceptance speech that he was going to raise taxes. Although Michael Dukakis dressing up at a tank commander for Halloween has to rank right up there. And oh yeah, let’s not forget John Kerry wind surfing in spandex. A visual that still makes Howard Dean shiver like a hairless Chihuahua on a BlackDiamond ski run.
But it’s way too early to talk about this election in the past tense. There’s a veritable plethora of ways this thing could still turn around. A Lee Atwater Special: Serious October surprise or November startlement. The Bradley Effect exponential factor fourteen. Convincing all first- time voters that the polls aren’t available to them until Wednesday. Keep Joe, the Biden, talking. A giant monster hand comes out of the sky and smashes Northern California. Lots of ways.
Interestingly enough, the former Navy pilot did experience a brief pop in the polls when he jumped off the campaign trail for a few days during the financial crisis. Well, there’s your answer boys. Clear the decks and let Sarah, the Palin, assume lead dog. Let the old man take a nap. His best shot at winning this thing may be to slip into a coma for the next week. Some might argue that’s a done deal.
Ugh. About as funny as Doug Stanhope! HAR!
You know John as a McCain/Palin supporter I almost will feel glad if Obama wins as I am getting so sick and tired reading nothing but crap about McCain and Palin all over the Internet. The majority of it just bias reporting by Obama supporters that has reached the point of not even being civil. There is an old saying about being careful what you wish for as you may not like what you get and I just hope if you get Obama you will like it or if not you have the decency and courage to admit your mistake.
I could have sworn John was in the McCain camp last week which had me baffled. Does this mean he’s switched?
Then, a question for #2, do you really think Palin is capable? Her educational background is terrible, she can’t interview, etc. McCain blew it there.
Looking at the cost of a vote and big money factor, I figure I can’t afford politics. Like somebody once said, it’s just an advanced auction of stolen goods. You might as well not even bother voting. The powerful and connected people know what they want and want done. At least McCain gives some comic relief. Joe the plumber is just one example. Palin is funny and looks hot too. Obama is funny at times, although he has sort of left the funny business to Biden.
It’s the million man march vs. the million mom march.
After the election is over, there should be more chaos. At least with McCain, you have somebody to look at, where with Obama it’s all about the men. I’m kind of looking forward to watching Palin for the next four years. I have no say in the matter, so I could get stuck with four years of more men screwing things up. Government is going to screw us and I’d much rather be screwed by Palin.
It took me a couple minutes to clue in on the Photoshopped pic of McCain as Groucho Marx. The cigar, pasted over his fist, finally gave it away. But I’m not sure what the visual reference has to do with throwing an election. Wouldn’t McCain’s head on a boxer, taking it on the chin really hard, been more suitable? I’m sure there’s an “Ali vs somebody” shot, somewhere.
As for McCain, or rather the GOP, throwing the contest. I agree. But the GOP can’t act as if it doesn’t want it. Or can’t pretend as if it doesn’t even matter who gets the job. Having so much more money than the democrats, you’d think they could have come up with a better choice than McCain. A guy who doesn’t even agree with the GOP line, much of the time. He really lost it when he started apologizing for the GOP’s smear tactics. George Bush II never apologized for them smearing Kerry, and look where it got him. So did McCain think if he played nice guy once or twice, he’d get a lot more votes?
Being both negative and positive, about your opponent, tends to confuse the crap out of voters. They aren’t going to love McCain for being the sensitive guy. They’re more likely to think he’s schizophrenic. Especially the older crowd that bought into all this “Obama is a terrorist” crap. So his disarming the crowd of Obama haters, really didn’t work that well. Where was McCain when the Swift Boat thugs were poisoning us against John Kerry? He didn’t speak out then as a fellow Vet, to defend Kerry’s honor, like he should have. But I guess he wasn’t allowed to back then.
Perhaps a picture of Rodney Dangerfield, with Palin, would have worked better. Cause McCain just isn’t getting any respect.
Why is it you Democrats will never understand why the Swift Boat Vets were so effective. The reason is that to anyone with any military experience the things the Swift Boat Vets were saying were probably true. They understood that you didn’t spend four months in the actual combat area and come out with two bronze stars, one silver star and three purple hearts (the third one was your ticket home) without gaming the system and not by being a hero. Kerry then compounded his no hero status by turning on these military men and women by his anti-war efforts after he returned. Kerry’s war record was a shame and these people could see it and they let their friends and relatives know it as well. The Swift Boat Vets did influence the election, but it was not because they were wrong, it was because they were right and you Democrats need to understand that.
This elections has been a real eye opener for me, as I never (nor everyone else) followed so closely an American election. My sum of all this is simple:
People over there get the job or lose it by the strangest of reasons, none of which relate to real world politics.
Either Americans are intrinsically nuts or the Mediatic exacerbation and alientation of reality has turned all into schizophrenic people, overwhelmed by fear.
To think that the outcome of all this will put a man in charge of the world’s (still) only superpower, with the real power to change the world’s economy, and therefore the destiny of us all, makes me almost terrified.
In comparison, BinLaden is a wuss.
To #8 things aren’t as bad as they seem. The problem is that most of what you see on the Internet and media in this country is not objective, ethical journalism, but simply journalism furthering the election of Barak Obama. There is some journalism favoring McCain, but it is far out weighed by the Obama reporting.
Take this article which calls McCain’s campaign the “worst” in history. In 1972 Democrat George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon. McGovern lost 520 electoral votes to 17, winning only Mass and Washington, DC. as Nixon crushed him. That surely was a worst campaign than McCain’s.
Right now most of the polls show Obama leading McCain by 5 to 10 percentage points with a 3 or 4 point margin of error and about 10 to 12 points undecided. This is still a pretty close race and McCain must be doing something right. But the writer of this article in not concerned with journalistic ethics, objectivity or analysis, he is concerned with furthering Obama’s election by denigrating McCain. The American people can see through most of this bias in the media and the Internet and that is why the race is so close. Let’s wait until Election Day to see who wins.
Scariest is the horrible shape the Republican elected Bush has left this country and the burden the next President will have to deal with it.
The silver lining to this mess
(1) The communications equalizer that is Internet has likely defeated the fascist GOP from taking over again with slimy politics.
(2) The GOP is forced to regroup and remove the religious conservative stick that has been lodged in their ass for a decade.
(3) An Obama government will be able to deal with these 21st century problems with 21st century ideas and open mind. As the possibly only president to have lived abroad, we will finally get leadership with a global view.
(4) More people will participate in the election process moving forward.
(50 Palin will get into AM talk radio to replace Rush Limbaugh who finally succumbed to drug addiction and diarrhea of the mouth.
#2, #7 and #9 – Robin said, “blah, blah, blah, McBush, blah, blah, Palin, blah, blah, bias.
My best chuckles still come from people like the birdbrain above.
It just couldn’t be that most people think Bush’s War on the Middle East is stupid and it wastes billions of dollars every month.
It just couldn’t be people are tired of watching incompetent pols prance around wasting their tax dollars trying to solve everything with prayer breakfasts.
It just couldn’t be that people are fed up with Free Trade True Believers mismanaging the largest economy in the world into bankruptcy through a mortgage system that allowed lying about credit-worthiness.
Durst and JCD and birdbrain are as afraid of the truth as are the fools who captured the Republican Party back in the day of Newt and brought reactionary ideology to its logical end.
Guys – it takes more than a well-managed campaign and ideology to win a political campaign four or five times in a row. Reality gets in the way. Even an electorate as gullible and uninformed as the USA, USA, USA! eventually figures it out.
#7 said:
“Kerry then compounded his no hero status by turning on these military men and women by his anti-war efforts after he returned. ”
I am sick and tired of this business that if you don’t support the war, you don’t support the troops. Kerry had the guts to call Vietnam what it was. A waste of lives and resources. He supported the troops more than anyone by campaigning for the end of the war. Those that “went along” for political expediency, they’re the ones that didn’t support the troops.
Nowadays people like to rewrite history, claiming that we should have fought harder in Vietnam. The fact is that the end of that war was a foregone conclusion. We could have sent every American man, woman, and child there to fight for 1000 years. The end result would have been the same.
Similarly I support the troops in Iraq. The civil war will happen there. The only thing we can control is how many Americans die while waiting for it. The smartest thing we could do is to leave NOW. Bring the troops home…not in 18 months. Have them home for dinner, tonight. It would not have any effect on the outcome. Admitting it, supports the troops far more than letting them continue to fight and die in a a war that was lost the day President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished”.
Thank you Will Durst! You started my day with a chuckle.
#11 Dallas “(3) An Obama government will be able to deal with these 21st century problems with 21st century ideas and open mind. ”
So what are these problems that are unique to the 21st Century?
@17 Paddy-O
1) Climate Change
2) Peak Oil
You will probably poo poo both of those as imaginary problems.
The politician today needs one skill to win. Terrorize the public. You have people like me that just don’t care. I quit voting. Let the military pick guy for all I care. Between the voter fraud and the buggy voting software, it’s all a mess. Then the one guy can raise hundreds of millions and the other guy can tell you that you are screwed yada yada yada. So what. My foot hurts and nobody cares about that either. I’ll limp around and maybe it will feel better.
#13 – Hey, if it were up to me I’d vote for Caspar Weinberger for President – push the button and lets get it over with!
I’m glad I can at least make you chuckle.
#17 How about globalization, you stupid shit.
You are going to have a puppet government soon. The big money donors are going to pull the strings and watch the prez dance on the stage. You’ll be in the bread or soup lines in California saying how’d it happen. They’re building a bigger morgue here.
Re #14
I agree with you the Vietnam War was a mistake from the time John Kennedy got us into it, Johnson vastly expanded it, and Nixon final got us out of it. I also agree that any citizen has the right to criticise their government and strive to change it’s policy, however, the manner in which they do it is important as well. My point was that to the military men and women who agreed with what the Swift Boat Vets were saying the manner in which Kerry attacked his fellow soldiers in his protest was dishonorable.
My original point was that the Democrats can not understand that what the people that supported the Swift Boat Vet argument that John Kerry was unfit for command was not just rhetoric and smear, it was what these military experienced people believed to be true, as do I.
My 2 cents:
McCain lost me when he changed his core values. He is not this maverick he has made himself out to be. Anybody as rich as he is is simply looking to be president to satisfy ego, one-up his dad, or to pay off old debts, none of which is a good reason to be elected president.
When he started pandering to the religious right the writing was on the wall. When his campaign selected Palin I knew he was no longer qualified to be president.
None of this has anything to do with Democratic liberal bias.
I no longer respect the Dem or Rep parties because I feel that they have been corrupted by special interest groups, corporations, and western religion. I consider myself a libertarian/fiscal conservative and have for several years now.
Obama should win by default. I hope he doesn’t disappoint us.
The irresistible pull of self delusion went on Meet The Press and predicted an 11PM, Nov. 4 Victory for itself.
“We have defeated the enemy of democracy through hard work and sheer negativity,” it said, “and we will be applying the power of the negative unilaterally from now until the end of civilization as we know it.”
“From now forward, the soft, compliant America is a thing of the past,” it went on, “and we will be seeking to revitalize our Honor through bullets, blood and unspeakable horrors throughout the world. They can’t put me in a box and throw away the key forever. We will have Victory!”
#26–robin==in actual effect, you support criticism of the USA/Vietnam War/Veterans as long as it is so politically correct/milktoast/non-confrontational/nice/gutless/unemotional/ as to be ineffectual.
Like most flag waivers, you don’t really understand or appreciate what free speech is. FREE SPEECH IS IN YOUR FACE!!!!! If not, its not free.
LOL!!! Welcome to the Seven stages of Grief;)
Welcome to stage one: Denial.
#12, Ed,
#2, #7 and #9 – Robin said, “blah, blah, blah, McBush, blah, blah, Palin, blah, blah, bias.
Man, you know I worship the ground you stay off of, but geeze, let’s get it right for once. What the idiot said was more like “blah, blah,(farpppaapprt) blah, McBush, (buuuurp) blah, blah, Palin, (faapptpptaaaarppt) blah, blah, (buuuuurp) bias.
Not that I blame you for not getting it right.
All you have to do is look at the polls
http://tinyurl.com/4bs8mg
Read it and weep, McBushites.
#32 Actually Mustard, Obama better start paying attention to the polls as well. Good news for him, he’s going to win. Bad news for him, Pelosi will have a massive majority in the house.
My fearless prediction, she will drive him crazy.
#26;; Actually Kennedy was just following Eisenhower’s previous Policy in Viet Nam. In 1950 we pleged $15 million to support the French. By 1954 we had spent over $1 billion supporting the French failing efforts in Viet Nam. Eisenhower’s was a big believer in the Domino theory… once Viet Nam goes Communist, all of Asia will soon follow… We sent advisers in 1955 and the first active US service men died in 8 July 1959 when Major Dale R. Ruis and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand were killed when guerrillas struck a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon.
I will not go into the lessons we did not learn there and are only repeating today…
That’s because Pelosi is as much of a neo-con as Wolfowitz is. She’s pro-torture, pro-endless war, pro-wiretapping, and pro-unaccountable emperor like power for anyone supporting the first three positions.
Down with Pelosi! Down with Neo-conservatives and neo-liberals, because they are both really neo-Nazis at heart.