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We, and I mean by that all of us who aren’t socialists or leftists, need to coalesce into the ‘anti-left’ movement. Our goal should be to characterize Obama as a zealot who believes in government mandated outcomes, and who has no respect for individual effort. We need to simplify our argument to be simply and specifically about the philosophy of the left vs. the philosophy of ‘the rest of us’, not the left vs. the right. We need to marginalize the left represented by Obama as the socialist-communist left who believe that all of the ‘haves’ are victimizers and all those who don’t have as much are the victims. We need to point out that Obama never addresses the horrible social ills that are crushing minority children in Detroit and other cities. We need to go for his jugular and characterize him as the worst kind of racist - the kind that uses race for personal gain and who doesn’t really understand or care about the real issues in the inner city. In short, we need to attack, and attack, and attack, and then when it’s time to sleep, attack again. There is a world of truth that in and of itself should and would sink Obama’s chances at another term. Use that truth.

I keep seeing this and I disagree. McCain did want to win. Anyone who runs for President and has been in the game as long as McCain has, anyone who went through what he did in 2000, anyone who spent 6 years in an NVA tiger cage, of course they want to win. You’re saying McCain wanted to lose? I don’t buy that.

I think what happened and the polls bear this out is that the economic meltdown that started in mid-September ended his chances and he knew it.

It was the equivalent of a slew of injuries to your favorite NFL team. Look at the Bears for instance. They were 7-2 and in great shape. Then their QB Cutler and their top RB Forte both got injured. Since then they’ve lost 6 in row or something like that and their offense has been abysmal. Is that really the coach’s fault? No one is blaming the coach.

The meltdown wasn’t McCain’s fault. Once that happened the election was over. Just like it will be if the market loses 30% in Sep 2012 and the media starts talkng about a new Depression every second on TV.

When you add to that that W had a 25% approval rating and he was being out spent by 400 million dollars, there’s really no way anyone should have expected McCain to win. And of course once everyone knew Obama was going to win as of Sep 15th or so, McCain’s support nosedived in a number of states and it ended up padding Obama’s #s.

Given W’s support level and the spending edge it’s amazing McCain did as well as he did. The #s tell me that if W was even at 35% instead of 25% McCain likely wins. If W was even at a putrid 40% McCain definitely wins.

And I will always believe that if the meltdown hadn’t happened, McCain would have won, despite W’s awful #s. At the least it would have been a vere close election a la 2000 or 2004. I still believe there was some shenanigans beihnd the scenes to cause it. It’s too much of a coincidence that just as Obama really started to look vulnerable for the 1st time and people began to think McCain would win, the entire economy collapsed and delivered the victory to Obama.

Now, I will say this. Once it happened, McCain was left with one option. To just go 100% negative and scorched earth and make Obama totally unacceptable. That I agree he didn’t have the stomach for and wouldn’t do.

Why? Because I think he knew Obama would win anyway and he didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who ran a last ditch smear campaign against the 1st black President, taht I agree with.

But he did want to win. Events he had nothing to do with made it impossible.

This time it will be very difficult. The economy is improving and will improve even more by next fall. Unemployment will be below 8% and voters will see it as getting better. Obama will have a lock on 95% of blacks and 65% of hispanics. Romney or whoever will need 61 or 62% of the white vote and that just isn’t likely to happen.