By the time the 2008 primaries were over, it was obvious that McCain was going to lose in November unless there was a "Game Change". There were many on the far right of the Republican Party who wanted McCain to go with a "Dog Whistle- Code Word" campaign and after the meltdown of the stock market the VP nominee Sarah Palin started to amp up attacks on Obama as "paling around with terrorists" and the crowds at McCain and Palin rallies started to get angrier. So what if McCain decides the only way he can win is to run the campaign the way the far right wanted him to do?
WI: McCain in 2008 "Goes There"
- Thread starter ejpsan
- Start date
It wasn't just the far-right who wanted him to get mad. Republicans across the GOP wanted him to prove that he had energy, that if he had to, he could roll up his sleeves and go to town on somebody. He was too busy trying his hardest to be nice to his opponent so as not to offend anybody, and that's part of what cost him the election.
If he had done things differently from the start or from a very early stage, he could have won, but late in the campaign? Not likely.
If he had done things differently from the start or from a very early stage, he could have won, but late in the campaign? Not likely.
Well, he basically did that anyway with bringing up Palin and his stances after '08...
That's what I was going to say too. McCain "went there" enough in 2008, or at least was apathetic enough about Republican attacks on Obama during 2008 that he has since been seen largely as betraying his stance of moderate maverick who stood up to the irrationalities and exploitative politics of many Conservatives. Instead, he became that which he was seen as a bulwork against. I think McCain and the view America has of him can be summed up in his relationship with Jon Stewart. If you know that, you understand.
It is important to note that many of the seeds of the Obama smears and vicious myths were seeded in 2008, as were the seeds of the political infrastructure both in the GOP and with the voters which has since opposed Obama on everything with a zealotry born of the idea that they are right and righteous and the president is a leftist of the most extreme and unprecedented degree tied to so much evil, plotting evil, and that what he supports is terrible. (Run on sentence). The situation has deteorated to such a heinous degree now compared to 2008, but the seeds were planted. The situation here seems to be one where McCain takes what took until maybe 2009 or 2010 to reach that high water mark, and unleash it in that massive amount in 2008. I don't know if the enviroment of 2008 will accept it. I remember 2008 and the days before there were Tea Partiers dressed up in halloween costumes for a second American revolution. Obama Republicans were a very, very real thing, and living where I did I very much have a first hand knowledge of this. I was constantly hearing from life long Republicans I knew saying there were voting for Obama, and I live in a very small town in a very, very, very Conservative county. I suppose I don't know if the seeds of irrational vitriol were something that could be cultivated to such a 2009/2010 degree at this point and hastened acceptably and successfully, or if they would be too green and not ripe enough. At the same time, I do recall people who dug their feet in, and stated all the heinous things about Obama that were being propagated in 2008 and which would lay the foundation for the smearing and populist vitriol that would follow. They were themselves very fanatic, believing legitimately that Obama was a Muslim or a Socialist or a Kenyan and all the other things. They just seemed to not be organized, and to be overwhelmed by the outpouring in support of Obama, and they seemed to be not as widespread compared to what they'd become.
In short, everything of smear was there in 2008 and that is where it all started, but in the OTL it took until Obama became president to pick up as much steam as it did (though it already had massive steam as it was). I'm not sure if McCain could utilize it successfully at the time if he went even deeper into it, or if it might backfire given that there was a strong populist backing to Obama and such backing is vocal and public and is not as apathetic as it seems to have become and the Republican smears would come from the top down rather than from the bottom up while cultivated from the top down and propagated from the top down which has created and cultivated things like the Tea party.
Ask yourself which group you think is larger: A) racist imbeciles who nevertheless either stayed home or voted for Obama in 2008; or B) non-racist, generally decent people who stayed home or voted for McCain because they were concerned about Obama being too liberal or too inexperienced or whatever.
I'm pretty certain group B) is a hell of a lot larger than group A).
So it seems fairly obvious that if McCain had gone harder after the racists, morons, and other assorted cretins in group A, that would have been more than outweighed by group B voters shifting towards Obama.
So I think the net effect would have been to shit Missouri (11 EV) and possibly Montana (3 EV) into the Obama column, while putting Georgia, South Carolina, and even McCain's home state of Arizona more into play.
What do you mean - you mean McCain actually tried to win in 2008, and takes the gloves off on some of Obama's weaker points (pointing out his inexperience, his elitism, various flubbed votes and questionable political stances and social connections), or do you mean he takes a long look at Sarah Palin and decides he can ruin his chances of victory even more efficiently.
On one angle, Obama still wins the Presidency, but by a smaller margin, by smaller coattails and with the GOP not in utter shellshock. In the other, McCain ends up making the last GOP candidate from Arizona look like a smashing success in comparison, and Obama's victory likely finishes the GOP as a viable party. The Tea Party likely retains its early Libertarian bent, joins with the Libertarian Party or forms a new party, and wins seats in Congress in 2010 and 2012, as it gradually replaces the GOP.
On one angle, Obama still wins the Presidency, but by a smaller margin, by smaller coattails and with the GOP not in utter shellshock. In the other, McCain ends up making the last GOP candidate from Arizona look like a smashing success in comparison, and Obama's victory likely finishes the GOP as a viable party. The Tea Party likely retains its early Libertarian bent, joins with the Libertarian Party or forms a new party, and wins seats in Congress in 2010 and 2012, as it gradually replaces the GOP.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
I agree with Mr. tT, I think ITTL Obama wins Georgis, South Carolina,Missouri, the Dakotas and Montana. Arizona is a possibility.
Quick aside:
I was jiggering with electoral atlas on this. If you transfer the closest states (and district) that went to Obama, up to Colorado, you get an even 269/269 split.
I was jiggering with electoral atlas on this. If you transfer the closest states (and district) that went to Obama, up to Colorado, you get an even 269/269 split.
What cost McCain the election, as much as anything else, is how much he LISTENED to the GOP. If he had run as the candidate from 2000 he would have been a far stronger choice.
As was, between his lurch to the Right (somewhere he was never really comfortable, as demonstrated by his unwillingness to start throwing idiotic Birther crap around) and his disastrous choice of Palin as VP running mate, he didn't have a prayer.
The funny thing is that when he selected Palin I was worried that she would really help him with the GOP base and allow him to play to his real strength in the center. Instead she turned into the biggest VP millstone since Eagleton.
Eh, I don't know. The Republicans survived 1932 and 1936; the Democrats survived 1972 and 1984. You'd need something more sustained than one really bad defeat to actually finish the GOP as a viable party.
Which is why I asked about the OP - if McCain went full-fire-breathing birther, combined with Sarah Palin being her oh so reliable self, I could see the GOP reduced to being a third party for the near future with the Libertarians taking their place while party stalwarts put the pieces of the Republican Party back together.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
The Republicans would survive and the Libertarians will never be a major party. There are not many people who would support massive cuts in government services and legal drugs.
No existing third party in America is ever going to become a major party. It's just not going to happen as long as they neglect down-ticket races.
In which case the 111th Congress easily appoints Obama and Biden.
It's difficult to see any circumstance that would result in a McCain victory.
The reality was that George W. Bush had basically destroyed the Republican party. There was eight years of accumulated crisis and catastrophe, 9/11, Katrina, the economic collapse, runaway deficits. The public was in the mood to throw the bastards out.
McCain's strength had always been in the perception of him as a 'straight talking Maverick moderate'. This made him anathema to the American right, and they were never going to throw him more than lukewarm support. He did as well as anyone could be picking a hard right winger, Palin, with no history and no apparent liabilities.
The trouble with the American right was that they were in the doghouse as far as the rest of the country went. They were seen as crank malcontents, they had separated from the mainstream, and all of their policies were seen as divisive, hateful and worst of all... failures.
So the harder he ran towards the right, the more the rest of the country would have abandoned him.
And it would have done him no good to descend into the gutter getting nasty. The trouble was that his personality and his history had enough startling negatives - just google his first wife - that it would have blown up in his face.
For McCain to win, you'd literally need a different America.
The reality was that George W. Bush had basically destroyed the Republican party. There was eight years of accumulated crisis and catastrophe, 9/11, Katrina, the economic collapse, runaway deficits. The public was in the mood to throw the bastards out.
McCain's strength had always been in the perception of him as a 'straight talking Maverick moderate'. This made him anathema to the American right, and they were never going to throw him more than lukewarm support. He did as well as anyone could be picking a hard right winger, Palin, with no history and no apparent liabilities.
The trouble with the American right was that they were in the doghouse as far as the rest of the country went. They were seen as crank malcontents, they had separated from the mainstream, and all of their policies were seen as divisive, hateful and worst of all... failures.
So the harder he ran towards the right, the more the rest of the country would have abandoned him.
And it would have done him no good to descend into the gutter getting nasty. The trouble was that his personality and his history had enough startling negatives - just google his first wife - that it would have blown up in his face.
For McCain to win, you'd literally need a different America.
Erm. no. Not if the exit polls are to believed - the people who cited Palin as a factor in their vote broke for McCain 56%/43% and even more interestingly considering all the sexist abuse thrown at her ("she's not a woman, she's a Republican", etc.) McCain lost white men by 16 points (57/41) but white women by only 7 points (53/46). Palin arguably did what she was supposed to do - energise the Right to go out and vote for a RINO and prevent the Democrats from taking the female vote for granted.
Granted, there was a lot of Palin hate out there, but the vast majority of the people who indulged in it (like 95% of AH.com it seems) were never going to vote Republican anyway. Left wing mythology =/= objective truth.
You are misunderstanding my point. Plain revolted many of the middle of the road independents and McCain did nothing to get them back into his column. She failed to energize the base for the ticket, turned off many undecided voters and made for easy parody by the Left (as well as energizing more of those voters). She was a millstone of epic proportion, probably the worst for any major party since at least 1972. All pain, no gain.
McCain was never going to win, but Palin brought out the base and some PUMAs. At the time, it seemed that Palin ended up hurting McCain, but she really just eroded his post-convention bounce quicker. The economic collapse would've done so anyways. Unlike other VP candidates, say, Dole, Ferraro, or Lieberman, she was a net plus for McCain during the election.
Who could have been a more viable presidential candidate for McCain and brought him the most gain for the least amount of pain?
If he did decide he was going to appeal to a certain niche of the GOP base could he conceivably have picked one of the GOP's more libertarian minded politicians instead of Palin?
If he did decide he was going to appeal to a certain niche of the GOP base could he conceivably have picked one of the GOP's more libertarian minded politicians instead of Palin?