What hurt McCain?

[FayeW]

I think you are probably right. The volume and ferocity of the negative attacks on McCain were unprecedented in American history. It's extremely likely they were successful in supressing Republican turnout.

Can I book a room in your alternate reality?

 

[corndog]

Can I book a room in your alternate reality?

You apparently don't get American television and radio?

 

[FayeW]

You apparently don't get American television and radio?

I am watching it right now...

Funny thing is, most of the negative ads I saw were from McCain.

 

[photobob]

I think it was the combination of Obama's appeal, the economy and being the candidate following George W. Bush. I agree the economy falling apart was probably the final nail in the coffin.

My question is what direction does the republican party go now? They do very poorly with the young and minorities, what can they do to reach them?

 

[Eeyores Butterfly]

I second this. I don't think the economy helped or Bush. How quickly the public forgets that they voted Bush into office though not once, but twice.

I think McCain lost b/c (I'm going to get blasted for this, but...) he's an old white guy. Period.

I don't think the younger generation feels like they can relate to him. Forget whether they even know what the politcal issues are or how this decision will effect them or their parents. McCain reminds them of grandpa who is old fashioned and out of date.

I think the black community as a whole voted for Obama b/c, well, he's black. Again, who cares what he stands for or supports.

Please don't make sweeping generalizations. I am 24, so part of the "younger generation." I outlined in an earlier post about my reasons for voting for Obama. The fact that he is an old white guy factored not an ounce into my decision. I made a chart of what all the candidates believed on the imnportant issues then looked at the candidate whose beliefs matched mine.

So please do not make generalizations about people you have never met. Have you polled my generation or the minority community to ask them their reasons for voting? I'm sure for some people the novelty of a young black president was a factor, but I don't believe it was as big a factor for as many people as you think. (hope that made sense).

 

[Eeyores Butterfly]

I think it was the combination of Obama's appeal, the economy and being the candidate following George W. Bush. I agree the economy falling apart was probably the final nail in the coffin.

My question is what direction does the republican party go now? They do very poorly with the young and minorities, what can they do to reach them?

This is a very good question. For me it would be:

-Take the focus off of abortion. Yes, I am pro-life, but as outlined above, I think the focus on this one issue is detrimental. They've wasted too much time and money on this one issue while ignoring the others.

-Rethink their stance on education. (I'm a future teacher).

-Start representing the average citizen, not just the wealthy few. I think this would help reach out to minorities as well since statistically speaking they are more likely to be in the lower socioeconomic status.

-Do not rely so much on religion to guide choices, get away from the religious right especially. I am Catholic (before that Southern Baptist) and while my religion is important to me, I also believe in the separation of church and state.

 

[PinkTink63]

I was thinking about this more today. While I can't speak for anyone else, I can say what kept me from voting for him. I do not affiliate with either party, in 2004 when I voted for a republican governor and a democratic president. In no particular order, this is what made me steer clear of McCain:

-At the very beginning I went onto each candidate's website and made a chart of their beliefs on key issues. I then looked at the issues most important to me and whose beliefs were a better match, Obama was a better match.

-NCLB: as a future teacher I hate NCLB and he wasn't going to do enough to change it. It is one of the worst things to happen to education in a long time.

-The war. I know we can't immediately pull out, but I don't think his strategy was the proper one.

-Bush's legacy in general. Despite the fact McCain is known as a bit of a maverick, I felt that any candidate would feel a lot of pressure from the party to try to preserve some of Bush's legacy and save face for the party.

-His personal life, he is too much of a womanizer, I don't like his situation with his first wife, and he has too much of a temper.

-His age and choice of Palin. I know he is in good health, but he is no spring chicken and this is a stressful job. Palin is completely whack a do and I do not have any faith in her should she be called upon to take over the Presidency.

-The economy, he did not seem to be in step with the current situation.

-As others have said, the Republican party has become a one issue party. While I am pro-life, it feels irresponsible to me to outlaw abortion without addressing the societal issues that lead to the abortion in the first place. The republican party spends too much time, energy, and money trying to pass laws that will wind up in lengthy and expensive court battles only to be eventually overturned. Instead, I think they should use those resources to address the societal problems. I would much rather stop abortion by making it so women no longer feel the need for one than passing a law. There are so many other issues, but this is the one they choose to focus on and it is one of the least important in my book.

-The scare tactics. From what I saw (which was admittedly limited as I try to avoid politics once I decide who to vote for), McCain ran more of an attack campaign that catered to the upper classes and relied on fear, while Obama told me what he would do when he was in office. I heard more about Joe the Plumber and Palin on SNL than I did about McCain's policies.

On the flip side, what got me on Obama's side:

-A better match on the issues

-His stance on education

-Seemed more in touch with the economy

-Would not feel the need to salvage the reputation of the former president

-Very charismatic and well spoken, important qualities in a leader

-I like his Iraq plan better

-Democratic party is not putting all their eggs in one basket issue wise.

-He is younger and more in touch with my generation. There is less fear about him finishing his term, and I have much more confidence in Biden should anything happen than I did in Palin.

-I felt that he reached out more to the average citizen.

In the end, it was a multitude of factors. I can't honestly say that I would have voted republican if it was a different candidate, but I would have considered it.

I could not have put this better myself! These are all pretty much the same feelings I have and the reasons I voted the way I did. The only difference is that I'm not in the education field!

 

[marybet]

I think McCain had an uphill battle. Bush hurt him a lot.

Bottom line is they just ran a bad campaign. They couldn't find a message that worked. I don't think it was Palin's fault, her pick just made people question his judgement.

If I had to pick one thing it would have to be when he said "the fundamentals of the economy are strong". They just couldn't spin their way out of that.

 

[bookgirl]

What hurt him the most was 8 years of G. W. Bush and the republican party. At this point after the last eight years and the way we are going into a recession and the economic failures, I think many voters just didn't trust another republican going into the white house.

It's pretty much a given that the next two years are going to suck economically and that we still have time that we will be engaged in Iraq, and I think a lot of voters just didn't want to continue with the way things have been and figured they were more likely to turn around with a different approach.

While McCain had been more centerist as a senator, during this campaign suddenly he went swinging to the right to establish himself with the Republican base, then he picked Palin who was very much on the right, then with all the negativity and fear in his ads and speeches (though Palin was much more negative then he was) it was just too much like politics as usual and all those middle of the roaders went left to avoid him.

I was for neither of these two at first so I could have gone either way, but it came down to who was closer to my own views and Obama though left of me was closer than the new right wing McCain. So I went left as did many of my friends (some republicans, some centerists, and almost all the dems).

 

[TheZue]

I think really he was up against a speaker you see once in a generation and it's very hard to overcome that.

Also the media was a major problem. Whether or not you think it is biased McCain just couldn't work it well. Bush is really good at managing the media, even when he had that press conference a few weeks ago about the economy he had members of the press core laughing and just enjoying themselves listening to him. McCain's camp on the other hand sent Palin to the one place they could grill the crap out of her and make her look dumb without being called sexist, and Couric really saved her career with that so she had a vested interest in getting a really "interesting" interview. He pissed off Letterman by lying about why he wasn't showing up, Letterman brought that up repeatedly and it made McCain look like a Jerk since NOBODY likes being stood up. He went to unsafe interviews (The View) that Obama managed to avoid, then whined about it bringing more attention to it. He just didn't seem to understand that no press is better than bad press. Even without the bias he was just terrible with the press.

 

[John Smith1]

I think you are probably right. The volume and ferocity of the negative attacks on McCain were unprecedented in American history. It's extremely likely they were successful in supressing Republican turnout.

WHAT ads? The ones comparing him to Bush? Unprecedented? Where you born yesterday?

Since when do negative ads work anyway? They sure didn't hurt Obama and if I had to swallow that Rev Wright ad one more time on November 3rd I'd have puked!

Ads can't hurt unless you have WAY deeper problems in your campaign. People are too smart for that. They don't just listen they see proof. And they make their decisions on how it affects them. I'm sure you did.

The problem with the marketing of the party was they believed that all people thought like they do. Scare tactics do NOT work for everyone. All Americans don't believe that the terrorist under the table is more important than the food ON it. In any form of marketing you have to know who your demographic is. In this case they missed the target, by a MILE.

 

[What the Heck]

In regards to the negative campaign, it's been around since the election of John Adams. Literally. And it could get a lot worse back then.

Regarding what went wrong, John McCain ran a lousy campaign in this one. He didn't do enough to counter Barack Obama's negative campaign against him (George Bush = John McCain, "they are going to try to scare you, ... they will say, oh, by the way, he's black"). He should have got on the issues and stayed there. Said what he was going to do different from George Bush, compare his fixes with Obama's, and he should have abandoned his health care initiative. He should have made energy as it relates to the economy a major part of the campaign. He didn't.

Sarah Palin was, as someone else said, a wash, especially when she is "quoted" for things that she didn't say, but came out on SNL. Some of the things she said were bad enough, but several times she was misquoted or had them taken out of context.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Tanuki]

What hurt McCain was the lack of interest from the top of his campaign to control the people further down the chain about all the lying. In this age of the internet when facts are readily available it doesn't help your candidate to keep repeating the same lie for a year after it has already been proven to be a lie.
It just destroys trust in your candidate.

Perhaps Republicans may need to consider next time that we are in a post-Rovian universe. We heard a million times how Barack Obama was a "muslin". We heard daily about his birth certificate.

But if we were supposed to believe that McCain actually differed from Bush we never heard how. We were just supposed to take that on faith from a campaign that filled my in box with annoying lies that I had to delete daily for months. You drove us crazy with the robocalls.

In the end we just wanted you to go away.

 

[Geoff_M]

WHAT ads? The ones comparing him to Bush?

The whooper attack ads that said that McCain wanted to privatize SS, or McCain wants to cut Medicare spending , Obama-proxy UAW claiming McCain's health plan would raise your taxes, or McCain secretly doesn't like Mexicans, or McCain opposes stem cell research, or the Michigan ad that said that McCain doesn't want to aid the auto industry, or perhaps the most vile and oft repeated one of all... that McCain supports sending jobs overseas..

Nope, it was just McCain running a negative, nasty campaign. That's what cost him the election.

 

[Rora]

Sara and his lack of campaining.

 

[tinkerdorabelle]

The whooper attack ads that said that McCain wanted to privatize SS, or McCain wants to cut Medicare spending , Obama-proxy UAW claiming McCain's health plan would raise your taxes, or McCain secretly doesn't like Mexicans, or McCain opposes stem cell research, or the Michigan ad that said that McCain doesn't want to aid the auto industry, or perhaps the most vile and oft repeated one of all... that McCain supports sending jobs overseas..

Nope, it was just McCain running a negative, nasty campaign. That's what cost him the election.

Even the late night hosts and SNL were making fun of the campaign being the OPPOSITE, making fun of Biden and Obama being too nice. There is nothing in comparison to what the Republicans did with their nasty campaigning, the complete total lies they spewed over and over, they actually went to the level of saying someone was a terrorist, a "muslim" to the POINT that even the REPUBLICAN PARTY THEMSELVES BECAME SPLIT and were denouncing it in the last couple weeks. You saw that poor old lady saying to McCain, "Obama is an Arab", she was so brainwashed from the blatant racism even that the republicans went to that she thinks that Arabs are all bad people and terrorists. Nothing in my lifetime ever compared to that disgustingness. It was dangerous. I hope we never go there again. I feel sorry for Palin in a way, she was a very useful prop, although she had nothing to say different than Bush so all she inferred was the negative Obama is a terrorist, inferring he's a muslim, or whatever. Although I feel bad they'll scapegoat the woman now that they prepped. I know many moderates that were on the fence, that went over to Obama bc of just this negativity. Bush and the state of this country right now is why they lost. If McCain stayed the Moderate he used to be, maybe he would have had a better chance, but he sold out, lost his Maverick ways when he was against the wealthy tax cuts, went along with the same old Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, etc., and just said negative things, just like Palin, instead of saying why he was different than Bush.

 

[Goofycampers]

Even the late night hosts and SNL were making fun of the campaign being the OPPOSITE, making fun of Biden and Obama being too nice. There is nothing in comparison to what the Republicans did with their nasty campaigning, the complete total lies they spewed over and over, they actually went to the level of saying someone was a terrorist, a "muslim" to the POINT that even the REPUBLICAN PARTY THEMSELVES BECAME SPLIT and were denouncing it in the last couple weeks. You saw that poor old lady saying to McCain, "Obama is an Arab", she was so brainwashed from the blatant racism even that the republicans went to that she thinks that Arabs are all bad people and terrorists. Nothing in my lifetime ever compared to that disgustingness. It was dangerous. I hope we never go there again. I feel sorry for Palin in a way, she was a very useful prop, although she had nothing to say different than Bush so all she inferred was the negative Obama is a terrorist, inferring he's a muslim, or whatever. Although I feel bad they'll scapegoat the woman now that they prepped. I know many moderates that were on the fence, that went over to Obama bc of just this negativity. Bush and the state of this country right now is why they lost. If McCain stayed the Moderate he used to be, maybe he would have had a better chance, but he sold out, lost his Maverick ways when he was against the wealthy tax cuts, went along with the same old Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, etc., and just said negative things, just like Palin, instead of saying why he was different than Bush.

This is a bunch of bunk. When people say BO didn't run a negative campaign I say you had your head in the sand. Since he outspent JM 4 to 1 his percentages of negative ads was higher. Please, BO didn't exactly win by a landslide. He esentialy bought his way in imho.

 

[FayeW]

This is a bunch of bunk. When people say BO didn't run a negative campaign I say you had your head in the sand. Since he outspent JM 4 to 1 his percentages of negative ads was higher. Please, BO didn't exactly win by a landslide. He esentialy bought his way in imho.

You have interesting logic, however, it is fundamentally flawed.

We accept and acknowledge that because Obama outspent McCain, it stands to reason that he had more ads. However, the sheer volume of ads doesn't prove that any of them were negative.

 

[Barbossa]

Here's an article that provides some interesting insights:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/westen.winning/index.html

 

[tinkerdorabelle]

This is a bunch of bunk. When people say BO didn't run a negative campaign I say you had your head in the sand. Since he outspent JM 4 to 1 his percentages of negative ads was higher. Please, BO didn't exactly win by a landslide. He esentialy bought his way in imho.

His own party came out against him at the end, shamed by the level of the lowness it was sinking to. Everyone does some negativity but never ever in my life have I seen it go to this level or have their own turning against them, which happened to McCain. They riled up hatred and fear with people shouting, "kill him" even McCain seemed to be shocked towards the end. It was horrible and dangerous. It went way beyond negative campaigning to the lowest level.