Comments on: McCain Ads That Didn’t Run

By: c

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:15:11 +0000

The McCain campaign's need to avoid even the appearance of racism was not the reason he lost, and I don't think that's the point of the article.
The point is that WAS one element of an unspoken advantage and it was racist to point it out. NOt that it won Obama the primary or the election, but it was useful and his campaign used it.
Even Bill and Hillary Clinton, with their strong record of Civil Rights were called "racist" - by other Democrats.
But now Obama can even associate with that racist Clinton- and even choose her for SOS.
Some of his supporters are amazed to learn that the anti-Clinton-the-racist (and insider and warmonger and monster) venom of the primaries may have been just politics.
There's a good reason that Obama was named "Marketer of the Year" - as was noted in Advertising Age. What a narrative!

By: PrestoPundit

PrestoPundit — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:41:27 +0000

You're living on another planet James ..

"McCain ultimately ran a pretty tough campaign"

It was weak, contradictory, and pathetic campaign, which failed to characterize Obama until the game was already over -- the worst and weakest sort of campaign strategy.

And note well -- McCain's best ads were Internet only, and were never broadcast. (E.g. the ones on Fannie Mae). Pathetic.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:54:53 +0000

Hopefully, we'll see President-Elect Palin in 2012.

Dear God I hope we do, this country needs 8 years of a Democratic administration.

By: John425

John425 — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:29:29 +0000

McCain's campaign sucked, to put it mildly. Only the addition of Palin prevented what would have been a landslide defeat. McCain acted like Kerry, waiting too long to respond to attacks and was always playing defense. Hopefully, we'll see President-Elect Palin in 2012.

By: Floyd

Floyd — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:58:48 +0000

Hey!! Kool-Aid!!

By: anjin-san

anjin-san — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:48:49 +0000

The financial crisis was not an automatic win for Obama. McCain's "fundamentals of the economy are strong" and his downright bizarre "suspend the campaign" ploy were entirely of his own doing. Obama's contrasting steady performance as the crisis unfolded was a such a strong differentiator precisely because McCain became erratic as the heat was turned up. If McCain had looked strong in the face of a crisis, it might have been different. McCain devoted a lot of time to saying "I have been tested" but his poor performance in the face of an actual test undercut the argument.

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:24:00 +0000

I think the biggest story about the Obama side, in retrospect, was that everybody underestimated him. They perceived him to have arrive where he was on some kind of free ride. There was even this idea that coming up through Chicago politics was something done for him.

I'm thinking maybe it was a proving ground. Maybe it was the hard scrum that his opponents hadn't ever played.

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:20:32 +0000

I'm thinking that with a centrist campaign the "fear the leftist" thing would have worked better. With a right-Palin platform he had to rely on a "character" campaign because most of the platform planks were out of the mainstream. I agree that the financial crisis pushed the "change" factor, but again centrist ("adult") leadership would have been a better answer to that. The turn right made the "change" in McCain-Palin harder to argue.

By: sam

sam — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:18:05 +0000

The Obama campaign was masterful, going back to the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, at making any attack on their candidate “racist,” thus putting the opponent on the defensive.

But James, that's not the whole story, or even a large part of the whole story, right? McCain ran a terrible, lurching campaign. He was outmaneuvered at almost every turn by Obama. If there was any constant in McCain's campaign, it was to try to paint Obama as some wild-eyed radical who was a real threat to the Republic. But that got wrecked on the shoals of the debates where Obama came across--accurately--as a measured, thoughtful person. I think the louder the McCain campaign got about Obama's "deficiencies," the more that worked to Obama's advantage. The gap between what the McCain campaign was saying and what folks were seeing was immense. And this led, in the end, to folks questioning McCain's judgement (and all this aside from his impalining himself).

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:14:46 +0000

Now that would have changed everything, if the Party had backed a centrist campaign.

I'd have preferred Lieberman to Palin, certainly. He couldn't have run a centrist campaign and won; he had to be something other than an older, grumpier alternative to Obama.

What Lieberman or a comparable choice would have done, though, is to have allowed him to run as a grown up rather than as a faux populist.

Ultimately, though, I think the financial crisis pretty much doomed any chance he had.

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:08:45 +0000

That is semi-interesting "inside baseball," but I think it avoids the central issue of McCain's campaign: He couldn't run "toward the middle" with a Lieberman VP the way he wanted. Now that would have changed everything, if the Party had backed a centrist campaign.