As you know, unless you were in outer space for the past couple of years, last nigh America ended eight years of GOP presidency and voted its first Democrat into the White House since Clinton. There are some who may wonder why the election went the way it did, and so I will try to break it down for you. This election went Obama’s way and against McCain because of fund raising, management, message, platform, Palin, political climate, geography, and voter registration.
The first, and the biggest reason, Obama won was that he raised more than 200,000,000 more dollars in funds for his campaign (some six hundred million compared to around four hundred million to McCain) than McCain. This meant that he could travel more, fund more commercials in more markets, and keep hammering home his message in many more markets than McCain did. With the money he was able to raise he was able to keep hammering away in states such as Indiana, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado, North Carolina, Montana, and others that normally went Republican. His money helped him conduct voter registration drives, put ads on television and kept his name in people’s minds. McCain was forced to do somewhat less and because of this he went off the air very early in a lot of so called blue states and he even had to abandon some such as Michigan and Wisconsin all together because he simply did not have the cash on hand to go there.
Almost as important to fund raising in deciding this campaign was management, or in McCain’s case mismanagement. Money alone is not what won this campaign, sure it was important, but managing resources and making decisions was far more decisive towards the outcome of this campaign. Quite simply Obama’s staff did a far better job of running this campaign than McCain’s did. Obama put together a brilliant fundraising campaign, put together a better message, a better attack strategy (the geography segment that we will talk about later), made better decisions about vice presidential choices, and did not make the so many crucial mistakes that McCain made. McCain’s poor decision making cost him the advantage of the attackad as attack ads only work if you are above the reproach of the message of your own commercial (you can read more about this in the message section). Obama looked like the seasoned political veteran who knew how to win and McCain just looked old and outclassed.
Staying in the Ms, message and/or message confusion, cost McCain dearly. Obama came out early as the candidate of hope and change. McCain came out as country first and then change you can believe in. Both had the words change in their slogans and at the end of the day this hurt McCain especially because Obama, using McCain’s own words about him voting with Bush more than ninety percent of the time, proved that McCain offered no change. So every time that McCain talked about change people thought Barack Obama. The negative attack ads that McCain used almost exclusively was equivelant to him shooting himself in the foot because while Obama did use attack ads he also had many campaign ads about policy and issue stances and McCain did not. This was to McCain’s detriment as the only issue ad that McCain had was about energy. Even worse for McCain was the fact that his decisions cost him the advantage of his attack ads. The strongest example of this was his pre Palin ads where he attacked Obama’s inexperience, but this message was shot down when he brought in Palin who is arguably one of the most inexperienced people at any level of American politics. McCain’s message further backfired when he linked Obama to the Wall Street Meltdown but retained Phil Gramm (the man who’s senate committee passed the legislation for the imbroglio) and was involved in the Keating Five fiasco of the late 1980s. Even McCain’s Joe the Plumber Attack ad fell on a sour note because Joe was not Joe, was not a plumber, and was behind on his taxes anyway. Last but not least McCain/Palin’s attack ad linking Obama to ACORN and Ayers backfired because you betcha McCain had ties to both as well. McCain’s attack ad strategy went awry because again attack ads only work if you are not guilty of what you accuse your opponent of doing. Ultimately McCain’s message was muddled and confused whereas Obama’s message was coherent, concises, and clear. He simply ran on the I am not Bush ticket and he was able to deliver the death knell to McCain’s Maverick status by linking him to big oil, Bush, and the ignorance of the past eight years. Obama promised hope and stayed on message even during the debate and in a time when McCain should have just ran away with it all (the debates) he failed because he engaged in tawdry attacks on McCain. Oh yeah and McCain was not helped by the insipid personal attacks on Obama claiming he was not an American, was a Muslim, and all the other empty crap that only worked on a few ignoramouses.
Platform was critical to this year’s election. McCain was forced to address an unpopular war, a horrible economy, education, energy and he had to prove he would not be four or eight more years of Bush while doing so. This really hurt him bad because he could not. Obama was able to shape a platform that was ultimately very similar to McCain but that did not have the stigma of George W Bush on it. McCain tried to call Obama’s platform the ideas of congressional liberals, but he forgot that in 2006 the American people voted in those very same congressional liberals.
Sarah Palin was the decision that ultimately ended up costing McCain the election. She did galvanize the religious right, but she scared the hell out of everyone else. Palin took away McCain’s best shot which was to say McCain has experience to deal with the tough times ahead, but Obama is a novice. This meant that even though McCain tried to continue the Obama “not ready to lead” attack that it fell on deaf ears. Even worse, Palin came off as stupid (no, not Simple [one could argue Harry Truman was simple]) and in a George W Bush type of way. People saw her and they imagined McCain dying of old age and her as the next president of the United States and they quite literally freaked out, and for what its worth so did I. Palin literally failed in her multiple interviews with the press and came off looking as a backwoods buffoon and it did not help that in her satire Tina Fey’s impression came off as more intelligent than Palin. Palin did get a few Hillary votes as some women voted her because she was a woman, but too many people saw her as the second Bush especially after she spouted the bit of Iraq is God’s will. Palin also forced McCain to not even think about Jeremiah Wright, becuase Palin’s Pastor was even more bizaare (seriously her pastor in Wasilla, while in Kenya got about four people killed because he literally started a witch hunt), and her pastor had some pretty wierd (for Assembly of God Rapturists) ideas about the last day because he believed Alaska would be a refuge state in the last days and that the church must be there to support people, but thats a topic we’ve already talked about so scrounge around and enjoy what you see here. Palin was the person who destroyed the McCain campaign.
Political climate caused McCain considerable grief as well as he had to run as Republican in a nation soured on the entire GOP because of George Bush and the legacy of the Bush and GOP congress government. People are tired of Iraq, they are tired of bailouts for billionaires and the shafting of the poor, of ignorance and the politics of fear and so they took it out on McCain. McCain was, politically speaking, in the wrong place at the wrong time because this election was a referendum on the Bush Administration and so people voted out Bush and it did not help McCain for going on record as saying he voted with Bush more than ninety percent of the time.
In addition to the above comes the factor of geography because as in real estate elections are made or broken by location, location, location. Quite simply McCain spent way too much time in Pennsylvania in the last couple of weeks of the election and there was no really sound reason for this. McCain spending all that time in Pennsylvania would be akin to Obama spending the last two weeks of the election in Texas and it would have yielded the same results. Obama was very smart to drop by a few of the solid blue states, but he focused most of his time in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico and this really helped him win whereas McCain spent most of the final phase of this election going to Pennsylvania which hurt McCain because he threw away Millions of dollars on that state that could have bought precious campaign ad minutes and electioneering in Florida and Virgina. Obama mastered Geography while McCain did not
Finally, but certainly not least, Obama launched a powerful voter registration drive. It was so well ran and so effective that McCain even tried to make it an attack issue via ACORN. Obama got people to get out the vote. This allowed him to bury McCain. Quite simply if you get more people registered to vote and you get them to vote for you than the other guy you win. Obama did this very well.
To sum it up there was a variety of reasons Obama won and McCain lost and chief among these were Money, management, message, platform, political climate, Palin, geography, and voter registration. McCain was, as the kids say, pwnd by Obama in all these areas.
