McCain has a better run Campaign

As a conservative I've gotten frustrated at times at how listless the McCain campaign seems to be. One moment they attack Obama on his record, and the next they are concilatory towards Obama. What would it take for McCain to have a better ran campaign, and what would be done different?
 
Well, its to late now, but I think if he had chosen antother running mate, that might have improved things for him. I hate to be one of those people who critizes' the choice of Sarah Palin, but really, their were so many other republicans who would have made a better choice than her. That fellow, Pawlenty I think his name is, would have been a great choice.
 
Well, its to late now, but I think if he had chosen antother running mate, that might have improved things for him. I hate to be one of those people who critizes' the choice of Sarah Palin, but really, their were so many other republicans who would have made a better choice than her. That fellow, Pawlenty I think his name is, would have been a great choice.

I think that without the energy generated by Palin he would be completely sunk by now but we'll just have to wait and see. I am afraid that the establishment Republicans and his campaign staff will try and make Palin the scapegoat if they lose.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I've thought about this a lot lately. Even if McCain had a great campaign and Obama had a poorly-run campaign, it would still be difficult for McCain because 2008 is such a Democratic year in so many ways. The fact that he is so far down in the polls is largely because, in a bad year for the Republicans, the McCain campaign has been idiotic and the Obama campaign has been about as close to perfect as a presidential campaign can get.

First, he should never have chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. She fired up the base and got good news coverage for a few days, but since then she has been an anchor dragging down the entire campaign. Those Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews marked the moment of no-return, because the American people saw quite clearly that she has no business being next-in-line for the Presidency. Worse, choosing her made McCain look rash and impulsive, which are not qualities the American people want in their President.

Second, a better-run McCain would never have mentioned the Bill Ayers and ACORN bullshit. Any consultant that had stepped out of their office at least once this year could have told him that that kind of thing is not what voters want to hear this year. It just made the McCain campaign look bitter and devoid of any ideas, an impression that Obama campaign did as much as possible to encourage. It's telling that the Obama people didn't respond by attacking McCain on his own questionable associations- they see clearly that, far from hurting them, McCain's dumb attacks merely help Obama.

The "Joe the Plumber" thing helped a bit, but it was too-little-too-late. By the time the McCain campaign got on this message, the vast bulk of the American people had already made up their minds.

I think the decision to abandon Colorado and dump everything into Pensylvania (where Obama is ahead by more than ten points) was a mistake. The McCain campaign continued to waste time and resources on blue states where their chances of victory were slim to none, while allowing red states like Virginia and North Carolina to slip into Obama's orbit without a fight.

So, a better-run McCain campaign would have chosen a different VP (Kay Bailey Huchison would have been smart), not restorted to misleading personal attacks, and focused his campaign message on the "Joe the Plumber" theme for the moment the convention was over. That would have made McCain much more competitive, but even then the odds would have been against him.
 
As a conservative I've gotten frustrated at times at how listless the McCain campaign seems to be. One moment they attack Obama on his record, and the next they are concilatory towards Obama. What would it take for McCain to have a better ran campaign, and what would be done different?


Is this because you've read... you think... you don't think... he's not... he's an Arab?

(Sorry, I can't help but challenge you with what I gather is your main gripe with McCain's 'conciliatory' style.)

Anyway, this is a subject for Chat.
 

Xen

Banned
I think the decision to abandon Colorado and dump everything into Pensylvania (where Obama is ahead by more than ten points) was a mistake. The McCain campaign continued to waste time and resources on blue states where their chances of victory were slim to none, while allowing red states like Virginia and North Carolina to slip into Obama's orbit without a fight.

I've thought about this too. Its almost like he gave this election away, by all calculations Colorado is all that is needed to give Obama the win so long as he is able to keep the Kerry states as well as gain New Mexico and Iowa, also states McCain has given up in. And even if by some miracle he does take Pennsylvania, it appears he will do so at the cost of Ohio, which kind of offsets Pennsylvania.

McCain should have played defense to keep the Bush states from 2004 while giving Obama the Kerry states. This have been what he needed to win, he might still lose New Mexico and Iowa, but he could have held the election, but then again Obama would still have strength in Ohio, Colorado and Virginia, but McCain would be on more favorable terms, even if he loses, the uphill climb wont be as steep.

Oh and choosing Mike Huckabee as Veep probably would have been smarter as it would have also moved the base, and there wouldnt be as many gaffes, so Indiana, West Virginia and North Carolina might not even be in play.
 
Until the campaign is over, it's not worth speculating on--it could still be a squeaker, polls or not, given the nature of the campaign. These things rarely end well, even in the U.S, which as Bismarck once noted, is particularly favoured in the "too damn lucky for words" department.
 
Oh and choosing Mike Huckabee as Veep probably would have been smarter

I wouldn't take that as a given. A lot of Republican voters in the South and rural areas clearly like Huckabee, but there are also plenty of other Republicans who view him as more like a southern Democrat than anything else - Remember, he was a tax-and-spend governor of Arkansas, which would raise an awful lot of questions in an 'economic' campaign.

Plus, McCain is reputed to strongly dislike the man (Nobody seems to know why) so chemistry would be at least as big a problem as with Palin.
 
As a conservative I've gotten frustrated at times at how listless the McCain campaign seems to be. One moment they attack Obama on his record, and the next they are concilatory towards Obama. What would it take for McCain to have a better ran campaign, and what would be done different?

Even if McCain had run an excellent campaign the poll numbers probably would stiil be similar since the economy is the main problem. Also, as others have said McCain could pull a victory or something major could happen .
 
If McCain had kept some of his original advisors and not listened to the Karl Rove crowd, he might be having better odds now...also should have campaigned in Florida more.

And why is he putting so much faith in Pennsylvania?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
And why is he putting so much faith in Pennsylvania?

Because he is a gambler. He's hoping that he roles double sixes in the Keystone State. What he doesn't understand if that it would take THREE sixes to win Pennsylvania (and he only has two dice) and that the American people are not in the mood for gamblers.
 
Have Bobby Jindal win the governorship in 2003, and done a better job handling Hurricane Katrina than Blanco did (him being Republican could help). He is then selected as McCain's VP. By 2008 he would have had more experience than Palin, and while he may not snap up any more women's votes, he's probably smarter than she is and the media narrative can't paint the McCain campaign into sliding into race-baiting (as it has in the last three weeks or so).

Of course, if Jindal's career had taken off earlier there are loads of butterflies. It's impossible to say how he would have done as governor, not to mention he probably would have been playing the role as Republican Obama at the 2004 RNC. Hell, for all we know he could be running as president by now.
 
As a conservative I've gotten frustrated at times at how listless the McCain campaign seems to be. One moment they attack Obama on his record, and the next they are concilatory towards Obama. What would it take for McCain to have a better ran campaign, and what would be done different?

Then maybe he shouldn't have stated that he'd run a clean campaign and started with the smears and lies.
Some folks around here figured that if he did that, what would he do as president?
 
Well, its to late now, but I think if he had chosen antother running mate, that might have improved things for him. I hate to be one of those people who critizes' the choice of Sarah Palin, but really, their were so many other republicans who would have made a better choice than her. That fellow, Pawlenty I think his name is, would have been a great choice.

I heard recently that she wasn't his choice at all, but rather the choice of the RNC. I heard that he wanted Joe Lieberman, but the party told him no way.
 
Another thing McCain should've avoided: the thing he did last month where he "suspended" his campaign to help with the financial crisis and ended up fucking up a bipartisan agreement.
 
And why is he putting so much faith in Pennsylvania?

Because it's probably the only way he can win at this stage. It's not a winning strategy - it's not even a particularly realistic strategy, it's more a desperate last roll of the dice, which are already loaded in Obama's favour.

This is, incidentally, another reason why McCain has fallen on his arse - nobody took Obama's fifty state strategy seriously. In consequence, too much effort was put into idiotic 'offensives' like Michigan, while places like Virginia, Colorado and Missouri crumbled. It's also one reason why Hillary winning the nomination would be helpful to McCain - you would have a much tighter race on the electoral map focusing mainly, perhaps almost entirely, on Florida and Ohio.
 
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maverick

Banned
McCain going for Pennsylvania while abandoning Colorado and Michigan, not to mention many red states, is the political equivalent of playing russian roulette with 5 bullets instead of 1...
 
Honestly I'd prefer to wait upon talking about this. Although Draper kicked it off with a pre-postmortem in the NYTM there are at least three books coming out on the campaign[1] and there will be a whole lot more data post-election as McCain staffers open up—I expect a dozen long magazine style pieces covering it as happened with the end of Clinton's campaign.

Put another way, most of our information comes from what is actually happening. We know a fairly limited amount about the internal McCain campaign (and for that matter a very limited amount about the internal Obama campaign).

Has McCain run a bad campaign? Yes, absolutely, but we don't have a fine enough picture on the inside. Setting aside stuff like Palin their smaller picture decisions are based on data we don't have.



[1] John Heilemann of New York magazine & Mark Halperin of Time magazine; Dan Balz of The Washington Post & Haynes Johnson; and the usual, and pretty bad in '04, Newsweek book by Evan Thomas.
 
More importantly the campaign is in progress and so is not apt for allohistorical treatment.

Only then is it safe to throw around memes like "John McCain=Calvin Franklin with executive experience?" (I know too soon).
 
He hasn't lost yet but basically the Republican Party has a problem in that its right wing particularly the religious right is in ascendancy and supports policies that the majority of the population don't weant, a bit like the UK Conservative Party was before Cameron brought it to its senses. Barry Goldwater regarded the self styled moral majority as a threat to freedom and he wasn't exactly a left wing radical

Effectively it would require it to reoccupy the middle ground and realise that there is a difference between state intervention to save the system and socialism as the New Deal Republicans did in the 1930's and Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900's.

In the long run it will probably require state intervention to get out of hand and get into mission creep once the economic crisis lifts
 
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