If you’ve wondered why Barack Obama is winning and John McCain is losing, look no further than these two ads, designed to close the deal for each candidate. It’s like Obama is playing basketball at Michael Jordan level and McCain is holding a deflated basketball to his head and wondering what the hell the whole thing is about.
That wasn’t John McCain; that was Andy Rooney.
In fifty years, one’s a chapter and one’s a footnote.
Even in his commercials McCain sounds as though he’s talking to a class of kindergartners. INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGED kindergartners, at that. And what’s with the dirge-like music in the background? That ad company should go down in flames with the campaign.
Krugman had a good point about this yesterday:
The McCain campaign’s response to its falling chances of victory has been telling: rather than trying to make the case that Mr. McCain really is better qualified to deal with the economic crisis, the campaign has been doing all it can to trivialize things again. Mr. Obama consorts with ’60s radicals! He’s a socialist! He doesn’t love America! Judging from the polls, it doesn’t seem to be working.
What is making me particularly nuts about McCain’s campaign is that while I’m socially liberal, I’m economically center-right — I am generally pro-free trade, skeptical of unions, doubtful of living-wage campaigns, etc. Unfortunately, because McCain/Palin and their supporters don’t know much about economics, they’ve skipped over the very sound arguments in favor of conservatism and gone straight for the hysteria.
Instead of questioning why the government ever created Fannie and Freddie, and pointing out the problems created by the FMs’ mix of shareholder demand and Congressional mandate (either go free market or go government, but for God’s sake don’t try to serve two masters), they declare that the FMs must be responsible for the whole subprime and credit crisis — a claim that is obviously untrue and thereby negates the worth of any critique they make about the FMs.
Instead of arguing against card check — something that even McGovern opposes, and that would be of genuine concern to voters in right-to-work states like Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico — they’re crying SOCIALIST on Obama’s plan to let some of the Bush tax cuts expire and a return to the rates of the Clinton Administration.
Krugman has hit the crux of what’s wrong with this campaign. It’s not serious. Its hyperbole and name-calling are destroying its credibility. For comparison, imagine an Obama campaign in which they explicitly called McCain a warmonger. Imagine Biden making a stump speech in which he says that McCain’s “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” thing wasn’t just a sign that McCain is incautious, but that McCain actively desires to create new wars. It’s almost unimaginable, because Obama/Biden have run a campaign that generally stays within its boundaries. They know Americans are sick of war, and that this is their argument to win — why throw it away by overstating the case?
This used to be something conservatives could do on economic issues: point out clearly, calmly and sanely why trade barriers and welfare without work requirements are bad. I miss the responsible right so much.
Fixed.
McCain is Hal Turner on the inside
I want a future, not a bitter, incoherent, erratic old man.
McCain: “He’s quite a talker, but that’s just bad judegment.”
And I know from bad judgment.
What is making me particularly nuts about McCain’s campaign is that while I’m socially liberal, I’m economically center-right
Yeah, but everybody says that.
By the way, Dutch Reagan was the exact opposite: He hated minorities and gays and spent way too much money. Go figure.
ed,
Yeah, but everybody says that.
I don’t think that’s true. My significant other in college was more socially conservative than I (opposed to hate crimes laws, believed in some traditional gender roles, wobbly on reproductive rights) but more economically left (big fan of unions). My current SO is a registered Republican and Palin fan, but having lived in Japan and UK, is fairly accepting of “socialized medicine.”
In my experience, Chris Rock is correct: no decent person is all one thing, and people who think about individual issues instead of just putting on the uniform of a party tend to have sympathies on both sides. That’s why I don’t make fun of undecided voters; it’s possible to be both deeply opposed to legalized abortion and also deeply opposed to war, and these commitments come into conflict in a two-party system.
That McCain ad should end with, “Also: get off my lawn.”
PG you (and Chris Rock btw) are right. I think the issue of abortion should be sorted out by both sides. You have the wild shits put up you with a lecture about STDs from a fundy, but you get sex ed lessons from the age of 8 as well. A combination of knowledge and social stigma works in the puritan scandinavian states. They have sex, but they don’t tend to have so many teenage pregnancies. I don’t think anyone wants abortions to happen (even pro-choicers), but the only way to reduce the rate is to start living in the real world, and not this promise ring nonsense hypocrisy land
Thanks, Oliver.
That was kool.
Cheers.
I realize that people reading this site doubtless know it, but it should not go unmentioned that McCain is again lying about Obama’s plan in the ad you posted: no-one of any significance in either party has proposed taxing anyone’s savings (there is little taxation of wealth in this country at all, and little or none at the federal level, with many states and local areas taxing certain forms of wealth, notably property and vehicles), and Obama is proposing to lower taxes on the vast majority of the population, especially the elderly.
That line about a top-to-bottom audit and eliminating programs that don’t work intrigues me. The first program that came to mine is abstinence only education, which is continually proven to fail. What about other programs and policies, like the “War on Drugs”? How about “No Child Left Behind”?