Best campaign in history defeated worst campaign in history
November 5th, 2008 at 03:42am Chuck Sweeny
What you saw Tuesday was the most amazing political campaign ever put together, steamrolling the most inept campaign ever put together.
McCain ran possibly the worst campaign of modern history. There was no central theme, the vice presidential choice of Sarah Palin drove voters away in droves, and McCain seemed either grumpy or angry most of the time.
Obama, however, assembled a tough, disciplined team from Chicago, where politics is a blood sport. They treat an election as a war, they target voters, assemble lists, make phone calls, knock on doors, and on election day they have a massive precinct army that makes sure people favorably disposed to their candidate votes.
That’s what Obama did, but not just in a city, or a state, but nationwide, taking the action to the “red” states and fighting the election on McCain’s turf, putting him on the defensive.
Combine the Chicago-style election machine with the power of the Internet, and the Obama campaign, with 5 million volunteers and donors, was unstoppable.
Meanwhile, McCain had no ground army at all. No volunteers, nobody making phone calls, nobody going door to door. That’s because that role has been played in recent elections by the Christian Right. But they’re no fans of McCain, and while they probably voted for him, they didn’t stuff any envelopes, walk any precincts or make any phone calls.
Thankfully, this election marks the repudiation of Karl Rove style politics of personal destruction. Republicans — not the McCain campaing, mind you — ran the dirtiest, sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen. Combined with that were the thousands of hours of anti-Obama vitriol on AM talk radio and FoxNews, the Republicans’ news channel.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
6 Comments Add your own
1. D. W. Palme | November 5th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Palin drove away voters in droves? What in the world are you smoking Chuck? Palin solidified the Republican base, something that McCain could not do without her.
Voters do not vote for a candidate based upon the VP selection and this election was no different.
2. Milton Waddams | November 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I think that the concession speech John McCain gave last night was the best speech he gave through this campaign. I gained back a lot of the respect I had for him back in 2000, but lost during the last few years and especially during this campaign. I think that is very telling that both candidates in their respective speeches spoke of uniting behind commonality and working together for the good of our country, far too much emphasis is placed on “the base” on both sides. The American people spoke and showed that we are largely a nation of moderates, with lunatic fringes on both sides. Obama actively went after moderate voters, and they largely voted for him. I think that if McCain had focused on his strengths with moderate voters, instead of trying to drum up support amongst the “base” he would have done much better. All in all, I am glad the campaign is over and am pleased with the outcome.
3. snuss | November 5th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I also agree that Gov. Palin was one of the few bright spots in the McCain campaign, so, the MSM did it’s best to smear and ridicule her. She holds a higher security clearance than either Biden OR Obama (until now), and was routinely given security briefings.
BTW, did you notice how nice the media is being to McCain, since he lost? Too bad they couldn’t be as “fair and balanced” during the campaign.
4. Monkey | November 5th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Are you kidding Snuss? McCain’s campaign WAS a trainwreck and will be case-studied by political scientists for years for what NOT to do. Palin was clearly a drag on the ticket and effectively removed from McCain the option to go after Obama on experience. She’s clearly unqualified, not intelligent enough and would not have made it to governor in any state on the mainland.
Had McCain picked Lieberman, for example, he would have brought over far more moderate Dems than the right-wing evangelicals that Palin attracted. His “maverick” pick fizzled after it was clear she was in over her head. Last polling before the election showed that 60 percent of the voters thought she was unqualified.
McCain was outmatched, outorganized, outmessaged and outclassed by Obama. The Repubs have a lot of work to for 2012 and beyond.
5. RogerV | November 5th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
The McCain campaign wasn’t the most inept campaign ever put together. That honor goes to the Robert Abboud campaign against Don Manzullo right in your own back yard. Abboud never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, was harder to find than Steve Fossett, got less press in a year than Manzullo got with any one news release and only had slightly more fundraising success than a Cub Scouts bake sale. Even worse than wasting over $200 grand of his own money, he blew another $200 grand of other people’s money. If those donors read the only published comment on the race, which attributes the loss to a “poorly run election campaign,” they’d be likely to ask for a refund. In an election with near-record turnout, Abboud’s share of 112,287 out of a total of over 311,000 votes cast was only slightly better than Dick Auman’s 35% two years ago. Pretty pathetic performance considering that every county but one in the 16th district voted to throw out the top of the Republican ticket, and probably would have done the same for the House member if they’d had a serious candidate to choose from. Having given away a once in a decade opportunity, Abboud has earned the designation Loser, with an emphasis on the capital L, which should be branded on his forehead in order to warn anyone naive enough to consider backing him for another run.
6. railrider | November 10th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Abboud also came off as arrogant and nasty. He offered nothing, and only tried to criticize Manzullo who has been a very effective and popular representative.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed