Lack of Vision
by Dave on Oct.30, 2008, under Minutiae
I’ve read a lot of stories about the McCain campaign this week, along with excerpts from his and Palin’s stump speeches. I’m stunned by their complete lack of vision. Their message seems to be more about how terrible everything will be if we allow the darkie to be President. Their party leaders are echoing this crap, and the message seems to be hitting home with the violent mouth breathers at their campaign stops:
Seriously. Watch this video. If you’re supporting McCain, tell me how this makes you feel. And compare it to the overwhelmingly positive vibe coming from the Obama campaign. Barack Obama spent 30 minutes in his infomercial last night speaking his positive message. He didn’t attack McCain or Palin. But neither one of those candidates can go thirty seconds without slagging Obama. Why? Lack of vision. As in, they have no vision, no plan for the country. McCain speaks in generalities “I KNOW how to fix the economy” without every saying how the hell he plans to do it. Lack. Of. Vision.
October 31st, 2008 on 3:51 am
You know all those people are also Steelers fans.
October 31st, 2008 on 5:11 am
No doubt.
October 31st, 2008 on 5:29 am
It’s the McCain/Palin Autumn of LOV tour. Non-stop campaign events highlighting the McPalin Lack of Vision. All negative…All the time! Coming soon to a high school gym near you! Drill baby, drill!!!!!
October 31st, 2008 on 5:39 am
Backing up your premise, Dave, is this grab from a Bloomberg article:
“The candidate himself didn’t refer to the economic data at four rallies in Ohio, including one in Defiance, where a few thousand people braved sub-freezing temperatures.”
McCain, on a day when GDP dropped, chose instead to intro MIA, “Joe the Plumber.”
BTW…rumor has it that the reason JTP was missing from the McCain rally was that he was pitching a screen play to Harvey Weinstein and preparing for a flight to Rome where an emergency Vatican Conclave was meeting to elevate JTP to Pope upon the death of Benedict XVI.
October 31st, 2008 on 6:05 am
Wow.
The only thing missing from that video is pointy white hoods and a burning cross.
October 31st, 2008 on 1:32 pm
Wow. Those people are scary. I mean, holy crap!
October 31st, 2008 on 2:00 pm
Aren’t they? This is the fallout from a consistent message of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and falsehoods coming from the McCain/Palin campaign. Imagine if (when?) Obama wins. There will be thousands of thoughtless douchebags like these people calling for his death.
There have been plenty of people on the left who have major problems with Bush, but I haven’t seen this type of blind unthinking hatred and rage. And the really scary thing is that these are heavily armed whackjobs who will actually try to kill the President. It’s unsettling as all hell.
October 31st, 2008 on 6:53 pm
I agree that some of these people will create scenarios in their little minds to try to actually kill Obama, which may be different from the current situation, but AGAIN — for hopefully the last time — the blind hatred and rage toward Bush personally over the last 6 years or so is what really unsettled me. Policy and decision making? Fine. Rip away. But the absolute disrespect for the man himself is to me probably a huge part of why the world doesn’t like us right now. If we live here and we casually call the man a fucking retard moron enough times, it’s pretty easy to see the carry over to other nations paying attention. Even Clinton, when asked about Bush’s decision making strategy, said “…well, until you’ve sat in that chair…”–well, duh. Bush was truly the first president during the internet for all intents and purposes, and maybe this is just the way it will be for all presidents from now on. Can you imagine this campaign without You Tube?
My guess is alot of people are actually still mad at the DNC for losing in 2004, but rage against Howard Dean only lasts so long, because the man is a cartoon.
Wednesday morning, the Democrats will claim a huge mandate. Why? Because he beat McCain by alot? Bush beat Kerry by a good amount, yet no mystic mandate was allowed. Huh? They’ll have 2 years of unfettered freedom to do whatever, and will be most likely filibuster proof. That’s a lot of pressure for a congress that has done nothing for 2 years already. “Oh– there’s a lot of damage to undo from the previous 4 or 8 years, and it will take time…” —Bullshit. Every new president says that.
I do agree that the hatred for a man who is only a candidate is a little unsettling, especially for dumb stuff like his middle name and he’s black, and he hates Israel now suddenly. Whatever works for you people — get those signs up.
October 31st, 2008 on 9:29 pm
Yeah…no. The rest of the world figured out all on their own that Bush is a terrible president. Somewhere around about the time his administration decided to lie their way into a war. I’d like you to explain to me what makes the man admirable, and what positive legacy he’s leaving.
As for the mandate argument:
2004
George W. Bush (R)
Electoral 286
Popular 62,039,073
John F. Kerry (D)
Electoral 251
Popular 59,027,478
That’s not a mandate. Getting just 16 EV past the minimum does not make a mandate. We’ll see how Obama does. Current projections on fivethirtyeight.com put Obama’s EV count upwards of 380. Winning by 110 over the minimum, you can agree, is quite a bit more impressive. But we’ll see on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Bullshit back at you. What other President took office in the midst of two wars (one of them unnecessary and quite possibly illegal), the beginning of what can shape up to be a deep recession, and a $10 trillion national debt, a damaged environment, and energy crisis, and a credit crisis that’s still unfolding? Bush inherited a balanced budget, a $5 trillion national debt that was being paid down, a relatively strong economy that was showing signs of slowing, peace on all fronts, a contained North Korea and Iraq, and strong relations with our allies. There wasn’t a lot of damage to be undone, but apparently there was a lot of damage that needed to be done. By the leader of the party of small-government, fiscal conservatives. He could have called for a sensible energy independence policy right after 9/11 and the entire nation (except the oil company lackeys) would have jumped at the chance. But he squandered that chance, and we’ve lost seven years. To top it off, he presided over the largest expansion of the federal government since the Great Depression, publicly condoned torture, illegally wiretapped American citizens, placed unqualified cronies in high positions, and repeatedly embarrassed us on the international stage. I’m sure none of that had anything to do with the rest of the world disliking Bush.
Hell yeah I have no respect for the man. He hasn’t earned it. As a matter of fact, he’s done everything to lose it. Even though he’s a lame duck, he’s working on his last chance to make an even bigger mess of things:
That’s great! We’re already picking the oceans clean. Let’s do it even more! While we’re at it, we might as well pollute the air. And water! I’m sick and tired of clean drinking water! Finally, let’s go ahead and blow the top off every mountain in Appalachia. Those things are sooooo ugly!
On a side note: you stay classy, John Boehner, calling Obama a chicken shit while on the stump in Oxford today. I expect nothing more from Republicans these days.
November 1st, 2008 on 8:20 am
Got one thing to say, the video is not a “fall out of a consistent message of hate”…..I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but these people are a reality…don’t be naive. These people exist….always, all the time. They hate all the time. The man is black, are you all that surprised that the racists have been yelling hate words? Do you think they care if they are filmed? They hate and in their minds they are right. They are just as committed to their opinions as you are to yours.
Okay, break down the numbers for a mandate. Really, I’m just curious as to the magic number for a mandate. I read your numbers above, I’m not talking about those. I just want to know if there is a magic number or not.
Again, I know you are making assumptions on who gets my vote. Don’t, you honestly have no idea. I’m making this comment only because your apparent assumption that people are all stirred up by McCain to hate Obama….that is naive. They hate him for one reason and one reason only, he is black. I’m as sure of that as I am sure that there are people who won’t vote for McCain because he has a female running mate. Actually there are people out there struggling to decide who they hate more blacks or women….they probably won’t vote at all.
November 1st, 2008 on 9:16 am
I hope the people who can’t decide who to hate more don’t vote. They don’t deserve to.
I’m not naive, and I’m not making assumptions. The problem I have with the racists at McCain and Palin rallies is that the candidates hear these things, the vile things their “base” yells, and they don’t do anything to stop it. Palin comes right out and encourages it by asking things like “Who is the real Obama?” — knowing well that she’ll get epithets and nonsense yelled back at her. What they should do when they hear this vile crap is stop their speech, look into the crowd and say “Enough. The man is a sitting U.S. Senator and a good man. We need to win this election on the issues and our platform, not on division, fear, and hate.” But we haven’t heard that, and we never will, because that’s all they’ve got.
I can’t break down the numbers for a mandate, nor do I want to. In 2004, the Bush camp claimed a mandate (for about a week) based on their weak numbers. If Obama wins in a landslide, I’d call that a mandate. Doesn’t mean any of his policies will be enacted, but I’d say a landslide should mean something in the grand scheme of things.
And finally, I’m not making any assumptions about the way you or Jim are voting. Most other commenters have made it clear. And while I’ve asked repeatedly for any defense of voting for McCain, I have yet to hear any positive reason to vote for him. “He’s not Obama” is not a reason. I simply don’t see anything positive from the McCain campaign, and he’s so unbelievably thin on details in his stump speeches that it’s impossible to tell what he plans on doing (though his recent record makes it look like four more years of Bush). “I know how to win this war, my friends…I know how to fix the economy, my friends…I know how to fix your retirement accounts, my friends…” but no substance.
November 2nd, 2008 on 7:27 am
For GOPers who hold out hope for a big boost from a “72 Hour Strategy” to get out the vote for McCain, ponder this. I went to a wedding in Wilkesboro, NC yesterday. On the way to the church, I passed the Wilkes County Republican Headquarters in downtown Wilkesboro. At 2:30 in the afternoon, GOP headquarters was locked and dark. So much for a GOP, get out the vote effort. The election is Tuesday, John McCain is behind in the polls and a county GOP HQ in a battleground state is closed.
November 2nd, 2008 on 5:55 pm
Maybe they were actually out campaigning. Just a thought.
November 2nd, 2008 on 8:35 pm
“Maybe they were actually out campaigning. Just a thought.”
Below–From the Los Angeles Times:
“Reporting from Delaware, Ohio — John McCain has targeted this wealthy area just north of Columbus as one of 15 counties in Ohio where he needs to drive up his vote tally if he is to beat Barack Obama on Tuesday in this must-win state.
But on Friday night, only nine volunteers manned the 24 phones in the McCain campaign office. The phone bank began operating on a daily basis just two weeks ago. And only five people have shown up on most weekdays since then to canvas local neighborhoods.
Obama’s campaign, in contrast, has flooded this Republican bastion with volunteers. Some canvassers first hit the winding streets of nearby subdivisions in March during the Democratic primary, and they have worked almost nonstop ever since in search of supporters.
Ohio is a battleground in the presidential race, and here’s the view on the front line: McCain’s get-out-the-vote operation has struggled to build momentum, and it appears outgunned by Obama’s”
I think the McCain campaign is simply out of steam. The closed GOP HQ in North Carolina…tepid turnout for canvassers in Ohio…the GOP prides itself on the “72 Hour Strategy” to deliver the get-out-the-vote numbers and they don’t have the foot soldiers to do it.