In an unexpected move (sarcasm), Time magazine has named president-elect Barack Obama person of the year for 2008. He fought a long and difficult battle to the presidency, and gave hope to America and the world; plus he overcame a mess of obstacles I’m not even going to get into. For these reasons, he is the person of the year, and we await his inauguration anxiously. Read more…
But, that doesn’t mean he’s not worth keeping a watchful eye on. John Hastings thinks so:
The majority of voters cited the economy as the key issue for them in this campaign, unsurprisingly. This information helps shed light on when, exactly, John McCain lost his chance at the White House. You’d think it would be difficult to pinpoint the exact moment (or moments, at least) when an election is lost for a candidate. Journalist and columnist Daniel Gross asks these questions about McCain and his campaign:
But when, precisely, did John McCain lose the narrative on the economy? Was it last July, when economic adviser Phil Gramm, discussing the “mental recession,” noted that “we’ve sort of become a nation of whiners”? Perhaps it was back in December 2007, when McCain said, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” Or was McCain’s economic goose cooked long before the campaigns started? Ray Fair, the Yale professor who plugs macroeconomic data into an election-predicting model, said that “since November 2006, the model has consistently been predicting that the Democratic candidate would get about 52 percent of the two-party vote.” (Read more…)
In fact, the beginning of McCain’s loss can be traced back to mid-September of this year. On the brink of economic crisis, the man told a crowd in Jacksonville, Florida that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
McCain’s misstatement about the economy’s strength was a symptom of a bigger problem for his campaign (that his team had no set narrative or strategy, while Obama stayed strong and true to his message throughout the campaign. Read more about that here.)
Once he admitted there was a problem with the economy, McCain suspended his campaign to fly to Washington and find a solution. He was unable to convince Obama he should do the same, and finally resumed his campaign without having solved anything.
Finally, the third debate. Joe the Plummer, while a wonderful “mascot,” could not stack up to the concrete former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett presented by Obama.
The point is: Obama ran a flawless campaign that stuck to a clear message. He stayed away, for the most part, from issues of race - not using it as a crutch to win votes, but also overcoming it as an issue with some white voters. There were many obstacles to overcome, which Obama did. And now he can apply that know-how to running the United States. Read more for a run-down of Obama’s whole campaign…
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s grandmother passed away late yesterday at the age of 86. She had been battling cancer. Obama had taken some time off from his grueling campaign to spend time with her at the end of last month. He had described her as “the cornerstone of his family.” Read more…
So this “GOP spending $150,000 on Palin family wardrobe” thing seems to be pretty good fodder. But it’s possible it’s more serious than that. In 2002, a Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was passed that basically set some limits on how much parties could spend on campaigns. This reform also referred to unregulated contributions and “soft money,” being money that does not directly attribute to the election of a candidate or their campaign. The ironic thing to notice here is that this reform is the McCain-Feingold reform, as John McCain was one of its pioneers. So, it is arguable to say that McCain broke his own law. I’m no lawyer, so I can’t say whether that’s true, but check out the specifics of that reform here.
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