The Top Reasons Barack Obama Will Win On Tuesday
We’re winding down now, and although I am going to keep this blog active under the current name for a little while after Tuesday (perhaps through the inauguration), I think it’s time to face facts: Barack Obama is the next President of the United States. Why? Let us count down the reasons:
#10: Guts. It took guts to take on Hillary Clinton, given the HUGE advantages she brought to the Democratic primaries. I thought Obama should have waited until 2012, and I said so. I was wrong.
#9: Youth. Youth helped Obama in two ways this election cycle: the youth vote is more energized than usual, and his own youthfulness contrasts well with McCain.
#8. Self-control. Let’s face it, for someone whom so many see as inspirational, Obama is a bit of a wet noodle. His rhetoric is not really that exciting, and his message is bland and often devoid of content. But he is a very, very cautious man, and when you’re the frontrunner, that’s an excellent quality to possess.
#7. Iraq. Who whould have thought two years ago that Iraq would be this far down the list? Yet, although McCain was arguable the wiser candidate on this issue, with his undeniable advocacy of a surge that has proven itself to all but the most partisan, Obama benefits from the fatique that comes with a long, hard war.
#6. Bill Clinton. Pity poor Hillary – not only did she have to face the Obama landslide, but she had to deal with a husband who has lost his touch and become a cranky, politically incorrect Andy Rooney-type figure. The Clintons’ legacy was tarnished by Bill’s antics, and Obama was the beneficiary.
#5. Hypocrisy. Obama leaped into the front rank of cynical politicians with his breathtakingly arrogant decision to shunt aside public financing, and then call it a move toward democracy(!). Anyone who remembers President Nixon and the Committee to Reelect the President (CRP, pronounced creep, perhaps the most accurate political acronym ever) knows that Obama has set back the cause of campaign finance reform 35 years, and the result will inevitably be a political scandal that rocks our democracy to its foundations – maybe not this time, but soon.
Still, there is no doubting the fact that his rank hypocrisy benefited him enormously, as he closes in on $750 million in campaign donations. The irony is that he didn’t need to eviscerate campaign finance to win – he just did it because it was the easy move to make.
#4. Sarah Palin (see #2 below). John McCain wanted to choose Joe Lieberman, but the feelers he put out to the base were rejected harshly, because Lieberman is pro-choice. That’s too bad, because Lieberman would have been a true game-changer…as was McCain’s follow-up choice, Sarah Palin, though in the wrong direction. Although it looked like she might be a brilliant pick in the initial afterglow of her marvelous convention speech, she soon revealed herself to be pretty much the clueless dimwit Tina Fey portrays her as, and she caused many voters who might have considered McCain to recoil from the thought that she might very well be called upon to serve as POTUS, due to the respected maverick’s age.
#3. President Bush. I love President Bush, and I always will. He was dealt a bum hand, and he played it very well initially, then disastrously, and started to finish strong before the credit crisis dealt his reputation a permanent slap. This is not the thread to debate the merits of the Bush presidency. However, it is clear that in the wake of the missing WMDs, Katrina, the credit crisis, and other major events, the public sentiment turned dramatically against the President and against his party. It’s possible that almost any Democrat could have won this election, because the country is in a very, very anti-Republican mood.
#2. The McCain campaign’s inexplicable negativity. Conventional wisdom says that the candidate running behind goes negative, and the McCain campaign reacted in the conventional way. McCain is not a conventional candidate, however: he is a highly respected war hero, known for his willingness to put principle above party and his eagerness to reach across the aisle if needed. The McCain campaign, in its staggering ineptitude, sacrificed all that good will on the altar of Ayers and Wright.
There is nothing wrong with attacking an opponent on the issues; although I disapproved of McCain’s ‘celebrity’ ad campaign, it was highly effective, and fair, to boot: Obama’s inexperience IS a legitimate concern in the crazy times we are in. McCain threw that away, however, with his acquiescence to the Palin pick, and he offered no compelling evidence that he had any answers to the economic concerns in the forefront of voters’ minds.
AND….drumroll, please….
#1. A good candidate and a good campaign. It may sound strange to hear from my mouth, but, policy differences aside, Obama is a fine political candidate, and his campaign has been run very well. It doesn’t hurt anything to have the advantages he has, as detailed above, but it might all have been for naught if the man himself were not so highly regarded by the voters, or if the campaign had blundered dramatically. Obama will win this election fair and square – I won’t go so far as to say he is the better man (I’ll salute McCain’s service, especially as a POW, until my dying breath), but he is indisputably the better candidate.
I hope he surprises me and is a better president than I fear he will turn out to be…
UPDATE 7:51 p.m.: Notably missing from the above list is the economy – but I thought that was included in the discussion of some of the items, and besides, when the economic crisis really hit, it only reinforced the trend towards Obama that was already taking place after the initial Republican Convention surge subsided.
Another honorable mention would have been the debates, but again, I saw their effect as reinforcing – though some would differ and see them as more cause than effect…your mileage, as usual, may vary…
The Economist’s endorsement included many of these points in their endorsement of Obama in the current issue. The money quote:
“In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.”
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12511171
That’s a decent list, I’d say. On campaign finance, I think we basically agree that Obama’s move was hilariously hypocritical, but we certainly disagree about how much we should hold that against him. Of course, very few things make me as giddy as hearing that we’ve set campaign finance “reform” back 35 years (if only we could kill it forever, what a wonderful world this would be!), so maybe I’m just willing to let it go for unprincipled reasons.
Notably missing from your list is Obama’s race – it is a top ten factor in his success. Lots of people want to vote for a black man for President.
I too am quite happy with the damage Obama has done to campaign finance reform, particularly the public financing of elections. Here’s hoping it is a death blow.
I’m surprised by your listing of McCain’s negative campaigning as an issue – your objection to it strikes me as childish. I don’t agree it was ineffective. McCain would be much, much further behind if he had only followed the high road.
The Palin pick is, for me, the signature issue for McCain in that it demonstrates, in real life, what I have said about McCain for a long time: he is a man of principle and character that is motivated to do what is best for the country, even when doing so places him in harms way, but his judgment simply cannot be trusted.
I find it surprising you didn’t even mention the filtered news courtesy of the MSM. They are guilty of numerous omissions, lack of any investigative reporting, and a clear bias.
And no mention?
The problem with the media isn’t that they’re biased; it’s that they suffers fools all too gladly. Any sensible journalist class would have long ago written off Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber as the drooling morons they are. But alas, no such luck.
Leaving Palin aside, Joe Lieberman would have been a horrid pick. There would have been a revolt at the convention. I’m sure McCain would have pushed him through and then went on to disaster. Lieberman brings no group of voters to the table and the pro-life segment of the GOP would have just stayed home.
The only true game changer was Hillary Clinton. If she was approached at the right time, she might have said yes. Now, if President pals Around wins, unless she challenges Reid, she will be just another backbencher US Senator. A John Kerry.
She would have turned off many GOPers of course but the independents would have eaten it up and the Dems she would bring would offset the GOP losses.
Speaking of drooling morons… Joe the Plumber is a big miss by the MSM, any focus on him completely misses the point: he is not the story, his question and Obama’s answer are the story and the MSM totally punted.
His question and Obama’s answer are not even the beginning of a story. Everyone believes in spreading the wealth around. That’s what government is for. If you think we should have an army, then you’re in favor of spreading the wealth around, since the poor get more than they pay for and the rich get less. Obama’s answer was utterly uncontroversial.
Now, if the MSM wanted to start a debate about what the optimal level of taxation and redistribution would look like, that would be interesting. But the Republicans and FOX News would just start screaming “SOCIALIST!” and nothing useful would get done anyway.
Ok, so you agree then that Joe wasn’t the story, I call that progress.
I used to feel the way you guys do about campaign finance reform, but recent scandals have confirmed the impossibility of politicians keeping a clean nose around money. There are ALWAYS string attached, with every large donation…
It is 100% true that the media is in the tank for Obama…I don’t think that’s even really disputable at this point. Douglas MacKinnon writes in today’s New York Times:
I also agree that Obama’s race was actually a net positive for him – there is a feeling, even among some conservatives, that it’s about time someone other than a white male gets the top spot…
Just looking at the movements in the polls, I must object to your inclusion of Sarah Palin as a negative for McCain.
McCain was behind. Then he picked Sarah Palin as his VP and went ahead by as much as 10% in some polls, taking NC out of contention for a while among other things. Then she gave a couple of bad interviews — in which Charlie Gibson showed his own ignorance of the Bush Doctrine — and McCain’s lead was reduced to about 3-4%. It normalized after the VP debate.
McCain only went behind again after the financial crisis hit.
People who think Sarah Palin is a “drooling moron” are those who have been influenced by the media. If you tell a lie enough, it becomes true and the media has done it again.
I’m not saying she’s a drooling moron – but she isn’t the brightest bulb…she’s obviously a very capable politician, but a number of recent polls have shown voters reacting negatively to Palin, I didn’t just pull that out of the air. She needs to work on her knowledge of world affairs, though, before I can take her seriously as a VP or possible POTUS…
Sarah Palin is a bad choice because her resume is too thin, as evidenced by her performance on the campaign trail and in the campaign spotlight – she has too little experience to be expected to do well in the national political limelight. I think she will grow as her experience grows. The failure of judgment is McCain’s and was not in picking her, it was in picking her now.
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