On The Trail

Day 2

(technically still Day 1, but you're all getting drunk right now, so I can probably get away with posting this 3 hours early)

“I Hope I die in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming at the top of my lungs like the passengers in his car” 

OR 

How McCain’s Loss Will Hurt Him, But Destroy the Republican Party.

What we are seeing is the worst of the Republican Party. And what’s particularly interesting about it is that it’s being pushed by a man who could have been the hope of the Republican Party. 

It will be no surprise to casual observers that the Red/Blue map hasn’t always been that way. Johnson famously declared as he signed the Civil Rights Act: “we’ve lost the South for a generation.” Nixon knew it too. Nixon was perhaps the most aggressive candidate to go after the 50+1 theory. The theory that you didn’t have to be popular, you didn’t even have to be liked (that much). You just had to appeal to 50% of the Electoral College and one extra person. 

That’s what made Obama’s 50-State strategy (since modified towards “reality”) so interesting. He wasn’t just after the blue state plus one (Florida or Ohio). Because he knew that if he went that route, the chances of losing were higher. By adding more states, and now that number is quite large, there was any permeation of combinations that could win him the White House. It increased the odds of winning. It was a really interesting plan. And an impressive one. And it may just work.

But I digress; the point is that McCain should have been running a similar campaign on his side. In 2000, McCain was widely liked and respected. Amazingly, he was still widely liked amongst independents (the only people who matter) leading into this campaign. Bush won a number of states in 2004, but he didn’t bridge the divide. And he needed to. The Christian Right was an anomaly of statistics. A group that had not been exploited effectively and which had a pre-fab grassroots communication system in place. It worked for two cycles, but it’s losing steam now. 

There’s the old saying, “you don’t switch horses mid-stream.” Well you especially shouldn’t switch to the wheezing, grey haired horse with a visible limp. Republicans would have voted McCain even if he hadn’t gone medieval on Abortion Rights. And they wouldn’t throw away their vote – not when that resulted in a stinking pinko commie coming into power. They were a set group. And yet McCain panicked. He worried too much, decided to re-affirm his base in August (you never have a sure base in August) and in doing so lost the independents he needed. Boy howdy did he lose them. Sarah Palin is one example, but they are many more.

So why is this bad for the Republican Party? Because McCain is actually a good politician. Like I said to a colleague the other day – McCain wasn’t born an asshole. Amazingly, if he hadn’t panicked, gone the high-road and actually appealed to independents, this race would be very, very close. But he didn’t, he will lose (knock on wood) and the Republican Party will pick some young gun from their ranks whose policies are actually even more divisive than McCains. 

The irony is that the polls say it all. When McCain doesn’t attack, independents like him more. Liberals see this and say, “man, if he’d just run a bit more cleanly, he would be winning.” While Conservatives see this and say, “man, if he’d just gone dirtier sooner we would have pulled this Democrat chump limb from limb by now and we wouldn’t have to be worried about him!”

McCain was a good pick in 2000 because he could have been a lot of things to a lot of people. In 2008, that will prove his undoing. He will immortalize the insanity of close-minded Republicanism for the Left and reaffirm the belief that you must destroy the opponent at all costs for the Right. And that is going to keep digging the Right into a deeper and deeper hole.

One wonders if, upon hanging up the phone on the evening of November 4th, McCain will think to himself, “we’ve lost the independents for a generation.” Probably not. He’ll probably think to himself, “I’m tired” while the Republican party screams in the back seat.