Tell this Poster why he's wrong: (Vanity) McCain will lose

Yes, I'm afraid after all the hope poured out onto these pages, John McCain will lose. There are at least two very important reasons for this (and they have nothing to do with media bias).

The first is - simply put - that McCain ran a lousy campaign. There was no focus on any one particular message that resounded with voters until Joe The Plumber came along (too little too late?) despite the fact that Obama's own voting record in the Senate said at least as much about his plans to "tax and spend" this country into bankruptcy faster than any president before him!

Why McCain was so hesitant to call Obama out on his liberal views is simple: McCain shares many of them! McCain believes - like Gore and Obama - that unless we do something about co2 pollution, we're doomed to suffer the ravages of global warming! In fact, McCain has often stated the need for tighter legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gases, and has voted for those that have come before the Senate! Nevermind the fact that anthropogenic global warming is "junk science", McCain has bought into it and that is just one area where his "Maverick" stance in the Senate has actually put him on the side of the most liberal senator there is!

There are other issues that were taken out of the McCain playbook because of his record and past indiscretions in the Senate. Can't raise Obama's associations with Wright, Ayers, Khalidi et al without having to defend himself from his disastrous association with Charles Keating. Is it any wonder McCain didn't want to touch Obama's associations with a ten-foot pole?

McCain can't bash Obama for wanting to "bankrupt" coal companies, when his own plan to convert the country to natural gas (for the same green purposes as Obama) would've had roughly the same effect! Yet another issue taken off McCain's plate.

And how can you decry Obama's "socialism" when they both voted for the biggest socialist bailout of investment banks the world has ever seen? McCain's vote for socialism at that level is no less aggregious than Obama's desire to "spread the wealth", and is especially vexing in light of the fact that the bailout legislation doesn't solve the underlying causes of the latest finacial meltdown in the first place!

So you can't attack Obama for being "green", for his past associations, and for his socialism because of McCain's "glass house" record on these issues.

Let's see: you start to make promises to the American people that make Obama's sound downright fiscally conservative! In a race to see who could give away more of the store, McCain and Obama were running neck-and-neck. Remember McCain's promise to tap 300 billion dollars of the bailout money to help homeowners stave off foreclosure??? Obama had been promising something similar for weeks ahead of McCain finally chiming in on the great taxpayer gravy train!

Tax cuts? Both were promising them. I cringed whenver I heard McCain start to talk like a fiscal policy wonk. It literally made me change the channel!

And please, John, the fundamentals of the economy were NOT sound when you made such a ridiculous statement at a time when foreclosures and bank failures were starting to mount! How can anyone seriously criticize Obama and Biden for their gaffes, when McCain provided the greatest bulleting board material of all time?

To this day, McCain continues to resort to the only trump card he has: his military service. While not enough can be said about his sacrifice for this country, most people - who just want to see us get out of Iraq and Afghanistan - don't want to see the same things, or worse, happen to their kids or friends. His greatest positive was a reminder to people of the brutality of war and why - depsite the fact he's the best qualified to be Commander-in-Chief - they don't want to be in one.

The second reason is, simply put, most Americans want change and feel - somehow - that Obama is the best one to bring about that change. Nevermind that "change" is a word completely devoid of any meaning without context, people want it. Obama's use of the word in making it the cornerstone of his campaign simply illustrates - again - how he was able to tap into this desire and play it consistently for all it was worth. McCain never had anything remotely resembling a message like this he could stick to through this campaign.

On a closing, personal note, I find two of the McCain campaign's most glaring errors revolved around their public announcement to pull out of Michigan, and the way they fed Sarah Palin to the wolves (the Couric and Gibson interviews).

On Michigan: even if you can't justify the expense of making another trip to the state, you have to keep in mind that you have coattails upon which other candidates are riding. The worst thing to do is tell the press you're pulling out of a state like Michigan weeks before the election! Pull out if you must, but keep your freaking mouth shut about it! McCain's decision to pull out early, and announce it to the world, has screwed a number of GOP congressional candidates, leaving them to fend for themselves, where they are being outspent by a large margin!

On Palin: the biggest mistake the campaign made in letting her do those post-convention interviews was that she simply was not ready for the kind of sleezy "gotcha!" questions she would have to field from people who were clearly in Obama's back pocket! They were going to go for the throat on her (never intending to ask Obama what qualified him to be president!). The final insult of those interviews was to reduce her to a punchline on Saturday Night Live, a show which mercilessly lampooned her even when she was there! She was clearly not ready for the kind of campaigns on the national stage that gets run down here in the lower 48, and it showed. She could've been a tremendous asset if handled properly. Instead, she became a national joke, undeserving as it was. I blame the McCain campaign for that.

So gear up for 2012 all. We're simply going to have to field a much better candidate then.

“Your basic argument is Obama and McCain are the same.”

No, I cited examples where they share the same views. McCain is an honorable man and a veteran with a distinguished career of military and public service. Obama is a virtual unknown but what we do know about him should reasonably scare any freedom-loving American.

Unfortunately, McCain happens to have exhibited some of the same bad judgment in choosing his “friends” as Obama did in choosing his. (Charles Keating, anyone?)

Both agree on global warming, which stands to threaten more freedom - socially and economically - than any other issue. Both voted for the biggest socialist expansion of government since the New Deal.

So while you may have an emotional investment in John McCain, please try to step back and look at the choice we’ve been given this election year.

Regardless of who wins, and I’m hopeful that McCain is going to pull off Virginia and possibly Pennsylvania, the biggest mistake John McCain made in this election was to accept public financing. Now, granted, if McCain wins, it won’t necessarily be considered a mistake, but this race shouldn’t be close.

Campaign finance has done exactly what I feared, and that’s to give the press ENTIRELY too much power to filter what they want about a candidate. If you don’t have the money, and the press doesn’t like you, you’re SOL when it comes to getting positive air time. McCain could have hit all the right buttons and run a campaign that Reagan would be proud of, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Only seven years have passed since 9-11, and we are seriously on the verge of having a socialist president who has close associations with people who absolutely hate this country. He hangs around outright racists who don’t even attempt to hide their hatred towards Zionists and white conservatives. The press won’t touch it. McCain and Palin bring it up, and the press dismisses it.

Now, McCain did have a chance to get the correct message out during the debates and blew several huge opportunities to to nail Obama to the wall. He failed to do so. That was a huge mistake. When Obama brought up tax cuts for people who don’t pay federal income taxes, McCain never called him on it. When Obama said Ayers was reformed, McCain had a golden opportunity to ask him how long should a president wait before meeting with Bin Laden. When Obama insisted that the surge in Iraq failed, McCain had a golden opportunity to state that it’s safer in Iraq and Baghdad than in Chicago.

McCain’s only ally in this ordeal was not fond of him to begin with, and that’s talk radio. If McCain wins, it’s because of Rush, Hannity, Beck, and Mark Levin. They have gone out of their way to support him, or at least do the job of the MSM and shine some light on Obama’s delicate use of a thesaurus to push the ideas of Marx. Obama knows this very well, and an all out effort to silence them will be made if Obama wins.

As for today’s results, I don’t see a 10 point victory for Obama. The formulas used in the polls are heavily dependent on a surge in youth vote. The past 8-12 years or so have seen this effort by youth-friendly media outlets to push the vote. Free concerts were given in return for voter registration. Yeah, there was a huge increase in registration, but no uptick in youth vote. MTV had Rock the Vote, which heavily supported Clinton in 1992. Clinton did win, effectively from Perot and not MTV, but I guess it gave MTV hope. In 2004 we had the MTV stars out saying the people would be murdered if they didn’t vote. This year, Puffy Diddy P Daddy has threatened the youth with death if they don’t vote for Obama. Will it work, nope.

As for Virginia and Pennsylvania, this plan to bankrupt the coal industry should sink Obama. The press has ignored it, and it’s obvious by Rush and Hannity playing those comments probably every 5 minutes of their shows on Monday. I’m quite confident that the message was delivered in those two states, though.

For Obama to pick off these Bush states by the margins the polls are showing, there is going to have to be some serious shift of political ideology in those states. I looked at the numbers from the past 6 elections, and they have all gone Republican. Some of these heavily red states that Obama is polling 10 points ahead in, George H.W. Bush easily carried in a recession ridden election of 1992 against an extremely skilled politician who was a master of giving speeches. All of a sudden I’m supposed to believe poll data showing a massive shift in the vote when we’re not even in a recession? I may be wrong, but I don’t buy the poll data showing that.

As for the bailout, I’m with you. I was to the point of sitting this election out, and probably would have if Hillary or Bill had been running. However, we’re dealing with an outright socialist who is close to winning, and having a super-majority in the senate. That’s scary. That leaves the court that he won’t have, but with a super-majority Senate, I wouldn’t put it past him to pack the courts, impeach Thomas, or add to the number of justices to the court. If that’s what it takes to push his agenda through, he’ll do it. That’s why I will vote for the least conservative candidate that somehow managed to win the damned nomination.

We’ll see what happens.

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