O Despair!
Politico’s got it. It’s more of the impending doom meme:
With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisors, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering—-much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.
A McCain interview published Thursday in the Washington Times sparked the latest and most nasty round of Washington finger-pointing, with senior GOP hands close to President Bush and top congressional aides denouncing the candidate for what they said was an unfocused message and poorly executed campaign.
McCain told the Times that the administration “let things get completely out of hand” through eight years of bad decisions about Iraq, global warming, and big spending.
I dunno, sounds like more of what he’s been saying for the last eight years. The guy never actually was an insider, no matter what the Obama camp tells you. You may recall is penchant for ticking off everyone. That, and, even if he gets it wrong sometimes, his penchant for knowing what is fundamentally right on the things that matter most and hanging in there.
Maybe he loses. But a race that has yet to veer off by more than a few points in one direction or the other, with an electorate that has spent the past decade confounding pollsters, I’m not getting how its lost already.
That said, who’s surprised that a bunch of pols, pundits and campaign hacks are in a panic and blaming each other. Politico notes it SOP but posits the public nature of it at this point is unusual. I’d suggest the heavily negative coverage and discomfiture with being insiders dealing with a double maverick candidacy may well contribute to that. Raise your hand if you think the Dems and Obama campaign hacks didn’t chew their nails when Obama got nothing from the convention and the Biden [pick, when Palin turned into a rock star, when polls dipped last week. Then again, maybe that gentle caress of that divine wind keeps them cool.
The candidate’s strategists in recent days have become increasingly vocal in interviews and conference calls about what they call unfair news media coverage and Barack Obama’s wide financial advantage — both complaints laying down a post-election storyline for why their own efforts proved ineffectual.
Either that, or they’be become increasingly vocal in interview and conference calls because the news media coverage is unfair, and because Obama has managed to saturate the air waves with distortions to the extent that grade-schoolers are able to recite the Bushite crimes of John McCain. You know, if I were in the Obama camp, I’d be in a panic if, after eight years of Bushitlism, in a tanking economy, up against an old geezer and Frances McDormand, with the wildly popular Messiah as a candidate, I was still stuck in a statistical deadheat and waiting for that fat lady to sing. Because in these situations lately, she hasn’t been singing Dem favorite tunes. RCP:
RCP Average 10/16 - 10/23 – – 50.0 42.7 Obama +7.3 Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby 10/21 - 10/23 1203 LV 2.9 51 41 Obama +10 Rasmussen Reports 10/20 - 10/22 3000 LV 2.0 52 45 Obama +7 Gallup (Traditional)* 10/20 - 10/22 2384 LV 2.0 50 46 Obama +4 Gallup (Expanded)* 10/20 - 10/22 2299 LV 2.0 51 45 Obama +6 Hotline/FD 10/20 - 10/22 769 LV 3.5 48 43 Obama +5 CBS News/NY Times 10/19 - 10/22 771 LV – 52 39 Obama +13 ABC News/Wash Post 10/19 - 10/22 1335 LV 2.5 54 43 Obama +11 FOX News 10/20 - 10/21 936 LV 3.0 49 40 Obama +9 IBD/TIPP 10/18 - 10/22 1088 LV 3.0 45 44 Obama +1 GWU/Battleground 10/16 - 10/22 1000 LV 3.1 49 45 Obama +4 NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/17 - 10/20 1159 RV 2.9 52 42 Obama +10 Associated Press/GfK 10/16 - 10/20 800 LV 3.5 44 43 Obama +1 Ipsos/McClatchy 10/16 - 10/20 773 LV 3.5 50 42 Obama +8 CNN/Opinion Research 10/17 - 10/19 764 LV 3.5 51 46 Obama +5 Pew Research 10/16 - 10/19 2382 LV 2.5 53 39 Obama +14
Great minds think almost alike. Here’s Peggy Noonan re the fat lady and the polls:
And yet: It’s not over. For one thing, Mr. McCain has got to be reading Steven Stark’s piece in the Boston Phoenix, which imagines the forces that could produce a McCain upset. What if Mr. Obama underperforms on Election Day, just as he did in the final primaries with Hillary Clinton? What if senior citizens turn out in record numbers and vote for the older guy, and the financial crisis seems to fade, and Mr. McCain finds new grounding on the issue of taxes, and the Obama campaign undermines itself with premature triumphalism . . .
Mr. McCain has endless faith in his ability to come back. He’s been doing it for 40 years, from Vietnam, where, with the injuries he’d sustained and the torture he experienced, he might have died, was likely to die, and yet survived, to exactly a year ago, when he was out of money and out of luck. And then he won New Hampshire. When he says, “We got ‘em where we want ‘em” he must mean: They think they are looking at a corpse. No one in politics has so repeatedly relished coming back from the dead.
Not a single poll has Mr. McCain ahead. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls as I write, rounded off, is Obama 50%, McCain 43%. Actually Mr. Obama has 50.1%, and if that is true and holds, it would make him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter to break 50%. But I find myself thinking of what that 43% means. It’s a big number, considering that this is the worst Republican year in generations. Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others.
They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist …
She goes on to say that Obama will have to deal with them if he wins. Yeah, well, Obama may find himself dealing with them sooner than that. Via Hot Air, Limbaugh on Fox re the art and science of polls: It isn’t about measuring, it’s about shaping.
About that media coverage, Michael Graham had a fun one in the Herald the other day. I’ll be on his show at 11 a.m. today, WRKO, gnashing teeth, rending $150,000 worth of garments, pulling at $4,000 hair, and plucking out the eyes that offend us. Either that or mocking the naysayers, doom-mongers and Democrats. My mistake, make that WTKK. I really have to start listening to talk radio. Here’s Graham:
I have a dream for Sen. Barack Obama.
I have a dream that one day, for just 24 hours, he could be Sarah Palin.
OK, maybe that’s less of a dream and more a plot point from a bad Lindsay Lohan movie (redundancy alert!).
But imagine the Democratic nominee’s day as Barack Palin Obama:
He wake up and reaches for a secret cigarette and a copy of The New York Times. Instead of the usual partisan puff pieces (“Obama Health Care Plan Pledges Miraculous Healings For All”), the Times is running exposes about his family.
Does his spouse have extremist political views? Who pays when his kids travel to Washington? And how do we know one of them isn’t really his grandkid?
Opening the editorial page Palin-Obama finds column after column filled with personal attacks and insults. Comments about his looks, how much his clothes cost, his speaking style - even suggestions that the radical teachings of his church might be a legitimate topic for discussion.
He clicks on MSNBC and sees the spittle-flecked face of Chris Matthews.
“Obama says he’s cutting taxes for 95 percent of taxpayers, but he’s not. He’s just sending them checks! No cut in their tax rate AT ALL! IT’S A LIE, A LIE! AAARRGGHHHH!
As the MSNBC medical staff fires yet another tranquilizer dart into Matthews’ thrashing body, Palin-Obama gets ready to face the day.
At the airport, Palin-Obama is under siege from the traveling press. “Why are you hiding, Sen. Obama? You haven’t taken questions from us since last month. Joe Biden hasn’t held a press avail since Sept. 7! Afraid he’ll make another ‘guaranteed crisis’ comment? How many more screw-ups before you dump the guy?”
A crowd of thousands gathers to hear him speak. When Palin-Obama mentions the “destructive foreign policy of George W. Bush,” someone shouts “murderer!” Another cries, “off with this head!”
By lunchtime, the cable news headline is: “Obama Whips Up Angry Mob, Some Fear Campaign May Inspire Violence.”
That afternoon, Palin-Obama sits down with a CNN reporter who spends the first half of the interview asking variations of the question, “How can a half-term senator with zero executive experience and no record of achievement be president? Shouldn’t you be ashamed of yourself for even running?”
“Let’s talk energy independence,” Palin-Obama asks hopefully. The reporter instead demands to know why Obama won’t release his medical records, his original birth certificate or the names of about half his contributors.
“You’re the most secretive candidate since Nixon,” the reporter insists. “And besides, the guy who plays you on ‘Saturday Night Live’ is way hotter.”
The day grinds on. False stories repeatedly corrected by the campaign continue to air. One Palin-Obama supporter - a plumber who asked John McCain a tough question at a campaign stop - had his private medical files hacked into, and found Candy Crowley hiding in his dumpster.
One more campaign stop, more questions about his wife’s politics, his children’s travel schedule and his clothing budget - and Palin-Obama finally reaches his hotel for a night’s rest.
His nightmare of misreporting, mean-spirited negative attacks and blatant media bias is over. For Gov. Sarah Palin, it’s going to last at least 12 more days.
Or four to eight more years, whichever.
Topics: impending doom!, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:23 am on Friday, October 24, 2008
4 Responses to “O Despair!”
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October 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Read Krauthammer’s column today for a breath of fresh air.
The upside of an Obama presidency is that now the entire country will get to experience what it is like to live in Massachusetts - with all the PC gibberish and circular logic that entails.
I foresee a massive spike in the sale of hemp clothing and a corresponding drop in the sale of hair care products.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Aren’t we all getting just a little sick of Politico and its supposedly balanced coverage with Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin? They have been trashing McCain since the beginning and it has continued unabated even through the times when he was clearly leading his royal highness. Mike Allen had a “tingle down the leg” moment on TV and radio when he literally oozed with excitement over a speech made by the one. When he went on Dennis MIller to trash McCain and Miller pointed out that he was a registered democrat and suggested an agenda, he immediately got off the air in a huff. Martin is at his haughty, arrogant best when trashing McCain on whichever outlet he manages to snare an invitation to espouse his pap. I see Politico as two short steps below the NYT “in the tank” position, but it is still in the bank. I accordingly apply the Politico discount and ignore what any of its people says.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Politico coverage is very spotty. Some of it is quite good, but a few of their reporters wear their agendas on their sleeves.
Loved the Michael Graham article. I really do think it would be a shock for high profile Democrats if they were suddenly covered by the media the same way as Republicans are. They know they get favored coverage, of course, but I doubt they realize just how easy they have it.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:42 am
If McCain loses it’ll be because of the folks who are at present damning George Bush with faint praise. (Well there have been mistakes made by George, but…….etc.)
It’s the same Republican party that is ostensibly backing McCain.