Is McCain losing his mind?

[Ddrak]

Palin's favorability numbers collapsed the more people saw of her and that had nothing to do with the economy. Other than the fringe wingnuts she turns off every demographic that McCain was hoping to win over by picking her.

That's the thing though - would she have been able to glamor her way through if the economy hadn't melted down and McCain had pretty much screwed it up. The media tends to be very binary in their love or hate of someone, so as long as Palin could keep them on side there was a solid chance she could have held the popularity.

Remember, she did get elected governer of AK (somehow).

Dd

[Harlowe]

Wasn't that a case of "we'll take anyone but the incumbent"? She did some shady mailings too questioning the legitimacy of her opponents marriage (because the wife kept her last name). That might have been her bid to be mayor, but anyway she is all about sleazy campaigning.

[Ddrak]

The Palin selection process:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008 ... table=true

Of course, it's the New Yorker and probably not the bastion of centrist reporting.

Dd

[Harlowe]

I love the Wes Anderson one (last one)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8fXaJmDbsY

[Harlowe]

The punditocracy's Seven Biggest Blunders of the 2008 election

This has been a campaign season when the conventional wisdom has fared about as well as Bob Barr's prospects for moving into the Oval Office.

During the primaries, the political prediction business -- all those glib quasi-certainties spouted by TV talking heads and embedded in the opening paragraphs of newspaper and magazine articles -- gave us such fantasies as Rudy Giuliani masquerading as a serious presidential candidate and mistakenly consigned John McCain to the GOP dust heap. Remember when Hillary Clinton was prematurely anointed as the nominee or the dire warnings that a protracted Clinton-Obama primary fight would, in a typical burst of Democratic self-destructiveness, cost the party the White House?

Of course, that was all long ago and everyone involved in these bum calls has been sent to their rooms without supper. But what about the errors of the last two months -- the equally fallacious theories about the fall campaign that have been the stuff of Sunday morning round tables and newspaper Op-Ed pages? Granted, we at Salon have sometimes stumbled on the road to omniscience. But that shared sense of humility does not dampen our glee in pointing out the punditocracy's Seven Biggest Blunders, homestretch edition.

Full article here, snippets of each one below
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/ ... ign_myths/

1) The Cult of Sarah Palin
After the disastrous Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews, however, the Palin pick seemed less a moose-hunter's delight and more like stale (Dan) Quayle. A Pew Research Center national poll released this week found that 49 percent of voters now hold negative opinions about Palin, compared to 32 percent voting thumbs down in mid-September. The Pew survey discovered that a stunning 60 percent of all women under the age of 50 currently have negative feelings about Palin.

2) Steve Schmidt Is a Genius
Schmidt's war-room mentality (he ran the rapid-response team for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004) may have been ill-suited for a political year when McCain needed a Big Idea to compete with Obama.

3) The Price at the Pump Will Fuel the Mood of the Voters
The headline on the Aug. 20 Quinnipiac University national poll is enough to prompt instant nostalgia: "Gas Prices Gaining As Americans' Biggest Worry." Brooding about a $100 fill-up seems so overwrought two months later with a financial system in tatters. Who would have ever guessed back then that oil prices would drop below $70 a barrel before Election Day.

4) Obama Should Have Taken the Money ... and Run
Obama, by contrast, gambled that he could do better on his own by becoming the first presidential candidate in modern history to spurn public financing for the fall campaign.

5) Obama Was Guilty of Hubris in Trying to Expand the Map
Obama is now forcing McCain to devote the bulk of his dwindling resources to defending once-safe GOP states like Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina, while Virginia has moved into the leaning Obama category.

6) Down-ballot Democrats Will Flee From Obama
It turns out that to most Democrats, the pluses of an unprecedented turnout organization, wild enthusiasm among supporters and a gazillion dollars in campaign ads outweigh the minuses of a weird name and a liberal voting record.

7) The Hillary Holdouts Will Never Come Back
Guess what? For all the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) nonsense that filled the airwaves over the summer, the Pew Research Center poll this week shows that Obama is beating McCain by a 91-to-5-percent margin among self-identified Democrats.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I've said all along that his selection of Palin was just a gimmick, something along the lines of "My campaign is faltering, but look! It's a pony!"

7 weeks after her selection she still doesn't seem to know the 2 line job description of the office she's running for. At the time some of my friends were telling me what a brilliant, bold selection she was. Now that the shiny has worn off, not many folks are saying that now.

[Harlowe]

I am getting the most retarded McCain shit in the mail and recorded messages....that'll learn me for ever registering as an Independent. None of my Republican nor Democrat buddies are getting any of this shit. It's been a real learning experience, though I'm a little confused how an Anti-American Muslim Terrorist can also be an American Socialist. But, it's a damn good thing I've been informed that his birth certificate is a hoax, that's a real "game changer" as the very important email I rec'd called it.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

[Harlowe]

That's one of them.

It's your desperate candidate, not mine. He hasn't pulled out of MN yet and Norm Coleman (one of our local GOP incumbents) is denouncing this robocall shit along with negative campaigning going on. He's stepping as far away from the toxic McPalin ticket as he can get to hold onto his seat. It's a tight race ...which is pretty sad considering Al Franken is his opponent - Air America Al Franken. Seriously, if you can't win handily against that blustering dork, you either massively suck or your ticket is dragging you down.

A big glossy Obama-baby-killer flyer was the most recent arrival to my mailbox. I'll have to bring it to work to scan.

Here is a call for you as well...yhalo thar Willie Horton

Hi, I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because Democrats are dangerously weak on crime. Barack Obama voted against tougher penalties for street gangs, drug-related crimes and protecting children from danger. Barack Obama and his liberal allies have a disturbing history of coddling criminals and we can’t trust their judgment to keep our families safe. This call is paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain/Palin 2008 at 866.558.5591. Thank you for listening. You have a wonderful day.

[Harlowe]

Speaking of local news, one of the more amusing support videos for Tinklenberg ....

What's the word, Tinklenberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJBpL5ORWUo

[Select]

Stop rolling your eyes after everything Harlowe posts, Fallakin. It won't exercise your brain. You need to actually read the links for that to happen.

[Ddrak]

The robocall didn't seem too bad. The mailer was just flat out tacky. Neither are going to help because I think grossly negative campaigning only works against your base, not against the swing vote.

...and that's the difference between '08 and '04. In '04, Bush didn't really care about the swing vote. All he had to do was get the base energized enough with anti-Kerry scaremongering and he had it won. In '08, McCain doesn't have a hope of energizing the base in the same way because frankly the GOP base is appalled at the mess things are in and would need a solid 1.21 gigawatts before it even started to crawl. On the other hand, Kerry couldn't mobilize a Democratic voter in DC while Obama could power the entire NYC grid with the energizing he's been doing.

Dd

[Klast Brell]

I really think the republicans should have ended up with Romney or Huckabee. All the candidates who had strong support from one faction had equally strong opposition from the other factions. When attrition took out a candidate with strong support the faction still oposed the other strong candidates and voted against them by voting McCain. They voted McCain because he was not Mormon, or not a New York Cross Dresser, etc. Not many republicans voted for him for who he was. Just for who he was not.

Now republicans still have to hold their nose and vote not in support of McCain, but in opposition to O'Bama. And before you bring up 3rd parties just remember that splitting your teams vote just gives the other team a bigger win.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Stop rolling your eyes after everything Harlowe posts, Fallakin. It won't exercise your brain. You need to actually read the links for that to happen.

I'll roll my eyes all I want, bitch.

You know how often I have to see a commercial of Obama's thats just blatant lies? Its like every goddamn 5 minutes cause I live in Ohio. I'm sick of this goddamn election and I just want it to be over with already before I go batshit insane and fucking off someone.

Also, Harlem Black people are ignorant and just voting for Obama cause hes black: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyvqhdllXgU

[Klast Brell]

I think McCain has lost hope.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFLc ... QD940GIVO0
Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was the result of space limitations

Lack of space my ass.

[Lurker]

Fallakin,

What was the point of adding that totally unrelated attack on black people at the end of your rant?

Where's Ddrak to tell us that Fallakin isn't a racist?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Just more support for me being sick of this goddamn election, thanks.

[Partha]

Well, you're going to have to deal with it sometime.

Yes, you WILL have a black President.

Yes, you WILL have Democrats having a near veto-proof majority in the Senate, and an overwhelming edge in the House.

That means you get to live the reverse of the Bush years.

Which, for you, is going to be very sad, because we probably won't have our troops in Iraq for very long to keep the sand niggers in their place, right?

And, of course, don't forget the socialism, which we're going to have simply because guys like Alan Greenspan 'had a flaw'. Of course, it won't be true socialism, but it'll be far enough from Mad Max to make you go into convulsions.

And I'm going to laugh the whole 4 to 8 years. Loud. Long. Laughter. Because this is what you get when you lied down with the dead dogs of the Republican Party and drank their vomit like Kool-Aid.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I still stand by that this is going to be a much closer election that the media is portraying it. IBD/TIPP had it at 1.1% yesterday, AP had it even.

The problem with polls is that they're inherently flawed, so none of them really hold that much clout with me.

Which, for you, is going to be very sad, because we probably won't have our troops in Iraq for very long to keep the sand niggers in their place, right?

Who's the racist?

[Lurker]

Who's the racist?

You.

Partha was using the term in your voice, not his.