May 13, 2006 -- The Day that John McCain Lost the Election
Yes, it is a year for change. Yes Barack Obama knew that before most other politicians and capitalized on that with a unique and brilliant campaign that offered inspiration and principle to us in a consistent and explosive manner. We will elect him as our President tomorrow because he offers our country the best chance for the revival we desperately need.
But, May 13, 2006 is the day that John McCain lost the 2008 Presidential Election. My friend Mike Berman reminds me that that is the day he spoke at Liberty University. In my view, that day began the destruction of one of the best brands in American politics. It is the day that Senator McCain went to kiss the ring of Jerry Falwell, a right wing preacher who McCain had called "an agent of intolerance" in 2000. His visit's purpose was to court the evangelical voters and apologize for being the independent maverick he had been over the course of the last 15 years. He minimized the importance of the high visibility issues where he had broken with his party such as immigration, election reform, federal spending and the anti-gay constitutional amendment on marriage and promised that he would be a leader that the right wing could support and trust.
Earlier this year, many Democrats feared running against one candidate in this presidential Election - that candidate was John McCain. He was the one candidate in the Republican primary who everyone hoped wouldn't win. Sure the deeply unpopular Bush Presidency created an atmosphere that favored Democrats this year. But many assumed that given McCain's special brand of independence, he was the one candidate that could distinguish himself from the President.
But May 13, 2006 changed John McCain in two key fundamental ways that have poisoned his campaign and doomed his chances to ever become President. It soured the media on him and it empowered the evangelical right at a time when their overall influence in the country was dwindling.
He minimized his differences on immigration, on election reform, and changed his support in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy. He began to support every anti-gay initiative he could find. On those and so many other issues, he merged into the George Bush and right wing clone that in these closing days of the campaign have choked him beyond breath. In short, he sold his soul to gain the nomination of his party. When he chose Sarah Palin and made the ultimate sacrifice to the right wing choosing a VP candidate who would energize the evangelical base but clearly lacked his standard of quality in public policy, it cemented his changed persona forever.
Many republicans complained that the media has favored Barrack Obama in this election. In effect they are forgetting that it was John McCain who perfected media relations in his last Presidential run in 2000. Yet those same media allies soured on McCain as he became more and more of a political robot in the Republican message machine and the authenticity they had experienced with him was lost as he tumbled into a pool of right wing muck. It was unattractive for him to court those who had previously dissed him and he had rightly rejected as putting their prejudice and narrow-mindedness above a unified and prosperous country. And his campaign handlers knew that he could no longer provide the access t the media that had once been his hallmark because there was just too much to challenge him on. A once guileless politician suddenly had his true beliefs to hide.
Didn't he know that his uniqueness for his friends in the media was that he didn't fit into those stereotypes for a politician? That his original brand of maverick - rather than the empty word it has become - was exactly the kind of candidate the media would have continued to revere? Perhaps they even would have more aggressively challenged the upstart heir to the outsider brand - Barack Obama - if the original was still around?
And didn't he realize that just as he was concluding that he needed the right wing zealots to win the Presidency, the country had already started to reject their falsely premised "values based" agenda?
No, John McCain didn't understand how a trip to Lynchburg, Virginia on May 16, 2006 would doom his presidential dreams forever.
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I think McCain could have won this with a better VP selection. Bloomberg was always his best choice and especially given the financial meltdown. I have always wondered if they spoke about it.
Joel Horn
I couldn't agree more, Hillary. I've been saying this to my pol friends for months. I remember that awkward moment just weeks (ironically) before Falwell's death. McCain looked like a beaten man, clenching his jaws, shifting his gate, darting his eyes. I KNEW right then that the Maverick was dead. Poor John, I guess he really never had a chance, what with his need to cower for the nomination from a theocratic political party kicking and spewing it's lasts breaths. I have no heartfelt pity for him...... though a sychophant who sells his soul for fools gold is a sad sight indeed.
The entire problem with John McCain is that he lives soley in the past.
He served his country, no doubt about that. But he's an old man, with outdated ideas, whose time is long gone.
Americans need to finally learn from the Bush disaster, and this campaign distaster to stop electing C students with long histories of having to prove something to their daddies.
And religious organizations need to get out of politics and start doing the job Christ charged them with: taking care of their flocks. They are not supposed to govern. If churches were doing their jobs, the government would have far less poor and vulnerable to care for.
Because he is the past...
ha!
amen.
Yes,
yes, and yes!
It is time for the Republicans to throw that constituency under the bus.
Can we really narrow it down to just ONE day?
James Carville nailed another - Sept 15, 2008: "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" day.
I'm a big BHO supporter, have been from the beginning, and when i heard McCain say that, i thought, along with everyone else, "Is he friggin' nuts?!" But i think he really meant that we do have a strong work force and that our economy has the tools it needs to get back on track (if the federal government would give some of them back, that is). Politically, it was a terrible thing to say because i would latch onto it just as the Obama campaign did, but it has been blown out of proportion. All's fair in politics, i suppose.
McCain made a fundamental strategy choice. He decided to bet on the far right rather than the great middle. Whether this was a good choice, we'll find out tomorrow.
McCain has seemed awkward and uncomfortable in many of his public appearances. I suspect this is because he is not telling his truth, but repeating a script designed by others to appeal to the far right. His mastery of the lie is imperfect, to say the least. I would feel sorry for him, except that he alone made the decisions.
McCain is a false man.
He's been false about his "name-sake" legacy, he is a pentulent spoiled child who hated being compared to his grandfather and father so instead of being proud of his family, he rebelled out of spite.
He was a false student and only made it through because of his family name.
He was false soldier, he was it for his glory, not love of country.
He's been false about how he became a POW...he had already crashed 2 billion dollar jets and wanted to go out again to save his name. He didn't do for love of country, he did it for love McCain.
He's been false for saying he's a maverick. He'll has and will say and do anything he has to become president, again not for love of country but love of McCain.
Americans have been lied to for 8 years and will are not saying loud and clear, NO MORE, we want truth.
Well said, seattledemocrat!!!
Amen seattledemocrat. I keep on correcting anybody who says, "Where is the John McCain of 2000?," that the John McCain we are looking at is the person as he always has been. From leaving his first wife, to the Keating Scandal, to his horrid jokes about women (i.e. Chelsea Clinton), to his numerous reports about his anger/rage, to Palin.
This pressure cooker that is a general election campaign/economic crisis has revealed both candidates: Barack as calm, cool, compassionate, and collected and John the complete opposite.
Absolutely right. He has never been an honorable person. The true John McCain has been revealed. The "Maverick straight talk express" was always just talk. I have wondered for years about people who believed it.
spot on!....bra
This election exposed who the "real" McCain is and it ain't pretty.
I don't see how he can go back to congress thinking he'll pick up where he left off.
I almost choked with laughter when a news anchor asked Obama if he would consider McCain for a cabinet position. I'd wager my house the good people of AZ have had enough of him and boot him from the Senate.
he's finished.
Oh my God...The Jackson, Mississipp
I don't understand why anyone in the states of Louisiana and Missouri and those surrounding them that were hit so hard by Katrina and left to r o t by the Republicans would keep voting for them!
In 2000, Republicans frequently refered to Democrats as "flip-floppers", that they swayed at the politcal winds that came along and at any moment would cahnge their minds on an issue, just as long as it was politically expedient.
As Mrs. Rosen elaborates, McCain has now become the very monster that he has fought against for so long in Washington, wishy-washy at every turn. Once he wanted to avoid negative attack ads, now their an means to an end. Not alienating the electorate according to racial lines; not any more. It's like watching a trapped, wild animal trying to chew through its own leg, horrifying , yet hypnotic.
When the ballots are finally tallyied, will the good senator offer a mea culpa to his original "base" who saw him as a genuine maverick of party change, or will we see a bitter McCain who was hoisted onto his own pitard by his personal lust for the Oval Office?
McCain has gone from "original maverick" to "unoriginal flip-flopper".
He's changed his position on so many things now that there's no real way to know where he stands on the issues, or if he'll stand still for long enough to get anything done. No wonder he and Palin are out of sync on their messages so often.
Actually I do have one caveat to my prior post. People can change in life. They can learn, grow and improve with age. However, if someone seems to be worse than they were at some earlier stage in their lives, it usually means they were just doing a good job of hiding who they really were.
Presicely.
Wake up people,
No one forces politicians to make the choices that make. Those choices reflect the deepest truths about their character and "who they are." It is absurd to believe that "McCain didn't run as himself." He could ONLY run as the man he is. If you hold some impression that he was someone else and is now not being true to himself, that is a reflection of who you are and what you to want to believe.
We are all the sum total of our lives, not selective moments frozen in time. If you think he has changed, well then you really didn't know him. Now he has shown you who he is. Sadly, he deceived you and that hurts; but let go of the delusion.
The person I hear everyone describe as "the old McCain," could not have made the choices he has made, ergo, the "old McCain," is the same man, with the same values and the same character. John McCain IS and has always been John McCain.
Well done. The supposition that there exist two McCains or more is ridiculous. John McCain is an opportunist of the worst kind. An opportunist he was and an opportunist he remains.
He ran as a parody of himself. He bowed down to the Religious Right when he needed their votes and he chose his running mate to please that group. The "agents of intolerance" were threatening not to vote at all until Senator McCain announced his VP pick. They did not care that she was so unqualified, only that she had a down's syndrome infant and a pregnant teenage daughter who was keeping her baby. It was disgusting to watch McCain lose his integrity for the fake holymen and pass by so many qualified candidates, and still saying "Country First." Senator McCain, the Maverick, the decorated war hero, sold his soul for the presidency.
I thought about this entire subject matter when I heard Senator Obama say recently in an interview that he was a reader of Shakespeare, because it was Shakespeare who wrote "To Thine Own Self Be True."
McCain has turned on HIMSELF. Even though he was the victim of torture, he does not oppose its use. He says he will not vote for his own immigration bill now. He has violated the very campaign-finance law he himself drafted.
Whoever John McCain is, I just hope and pray he does not become president. I will be distraught if that happens.
I used to like McCain. Now I have no idea if the man I liked existed or sold out.
He is a republican.
He is for deregulation of banks, business and wall street.
Banks fell, wall street panics, and several large businesses are begging for goverment help, without any added regulation to keep this from happening again.
McCain also wants to privatize Social Security, and put it in the hands of those failed CEO's, businesses, and wall street, even after the collapse.
He does not learn, nor adjust. America could not afford someone who cannot adjust to the times.
I am at a loss to understand why a gay rights advocate like Ms. Rosen has not penned a single word about Proposition 8. Prop H8 is clearly the most important ballot initiative in the US. Over $70 million from all over the country has poured in to both sides in an effort to ban or sustain same-sex marriages in California.
McCain swore he would not use the Rev. Wright against Obama and today I saw a hateful ad with, you guessed it, Rev. Wright.
That will not win the election for McCain since it didn't work for Hillary, but it will bring his integrity down one more notch.
Senator McCain could have gone out with respect and honor, but he has taken the Karl Rove low road "the end justifies the means" way of campaigning. What he has failed to grasp is the voting public are disgusted by the slimy underbelly Rovian "fear and smear" politics.
We, as a nation, painfully understand the way Bush was crammed down our throats by the republican machine. With this realization of how our psyches were manipulated by fear and lies, we can now reject the method.
We were fooled, BUT WE WON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN.
OBAMA/BIDEN 08
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I saw the same ad in CA, but it's paid for by the GOP, not McCain.
Well, let's use McCain's 'guilt by association' rule here. Paid for by the GOP. GOP equals McCain. I guess McCain is 'palling around' with liars so he must be a liar!
McCain lost me the day he voted against his own bill against torture.
totally
It is sad to see a person sell out their soul or, perhaps, expose it without shame for their ambitions. McCain never really had me to lose me, but I had once thought of him as leaning Independent in a party that had turned into ruthless thugs and far right religious fanatics. How naive I was.
I have come to see that John McCain has always been a person with a sense of entitlement, from childhood to a young man to the present moment. The cape of honor he had carefully woven around himself now is in shreds. . . as it should be, since the thread of fiction cannot withstand the strength of truth.
I wouldn't trust this man to be a friend, let alone president.
Yep. I wouldn't have voted for him regardless, but his anti-torture bill said to me that he had an underlying decency. Turned out not to be true at all.
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