McCain doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 | 307 readers so far
Reports today indicate that John McCain has finally injected some negativity into the Presidential race, despite his much ballyhooed rhetoric about positive, dignified campaigning. The reason for this is simple. John McCain has finally figured out he doesn’t have a chance in hell of being President.
The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness.
By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.
The drumbeat of attacks could also undermine his argument that he will champion a new brand of politics.
“The McCain campaign, I think, is being pulled in two directions,” said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked for Mr. McCain in 2000. “On the one hand, this race is largely a referendum on Obama, and whether or not he’s going to pass the leadership threshold in the eyes of voters. So being aggressive against Obama on questions of leadership and trust and risk are important, but at the same time I think they need to be very careful because McCain is not at his best when he is being overly partisan and negative.”
Let’s be honest with each other, shall we? John McCain doesn’t represent hope for the parasite masses of helpless, hopeless Americans who need someone to manage their otherwise out of control lives. America is totally ready for a President who will promise us a big-screen TV in every living room. America needs a man at the helm who believes everyone is entitled to be equally mediocre. This nation believes in taking money away from producers and giving it to non-producers with very few strings attached. This nation believes that thick books filled with rules are more important than common sense. This union of states is perfectly comfortable with the idea of zero tolerance. Our huddled masses are focused on fake boobs and reality TV these days. That is why this nation wants and needs the cult of Barack Obama. That is why Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America.
That our next President will be a tall, black good-looking, cigarette smoking socialist specializing in speeches filled with powerful but ultimately empty rhetoric backed up by graft based on force of arms is as inevitable as the fall of Rome.
If I wanted to be President and I knew I was doomed to lose because of ignorance I had helped perpetuate during my career, I’d probably be negative too.
1 July 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Matthew says:
Well you got the first part right. McCain will not be President.
Everything else you got wrong.
/cigarette smoking socialist? really? I don’t even get those ridiculous chain emails anymore.
2 July 30th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Trevor says:
Matt,
Sorry if I insulted your god-king. Good luck with your petitions to his holiness Obama the Rhetorical
I’ll be ignoring him whenever possible and avoiding him when I cannot ignore him.
3 July 30th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Chamberlin says:
@Trevor
Most of what I hear from those that are opposed to Obama is that “his speeches are full of empty rhetoric”. This always made me laugh because typically, their objections to Senator Obama seem to be pretty empty too. Either they are based on completely false BS like that he is a Muslim or that he’s a socialist (huh?) or completely petty crap like lapel pins or terrorist fist bumps. When are you going to talk about the actual issues like the Iraq war, the economy, etc.?
I also find it ridiculous that you are so offput by how popular he is (”Sorry I insulted your god-king”). Hey… we’re sorry you don’t think much of your nominee but we (Democrats) are very enthusiastic about ours and I think we would have been about most of the Democrats who ran for the nomination.
Your party is split down the middle… to this, I say: It serves you right. Conservativism (real Goldwater conservativism) is an economic construct that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Do you really think most Americans trust that corporations will give back to the worker bees via Trickle-down economics? Corps like Enron, Halliburton, WorldCom, etc. etc? The Republican leadership figured out that this isn’t going to get anyone elected a long time ago, so they bundled Religion into the fold and have done their best to cater to those who automatically mistrust anyone who isn’t a WASP. (For the record, I myself am a WASP.) The religious right now has figured out that they have been duped and now you have McCain going back and forth between social issues looking like a fool trying to charm both sides of the rift. He can’t appease both the religious part and the neo-con part of the GOP simultaneously. Bush and rove wrecked your party and you have nobody to thank but yourselves. Trying to influence the voters using hate, fear and greed will only work for so long. Good Luck in the minority. You deserve it.
4 July 30th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Trevor says:
Chamberlin,
I’ll bite.
Barack Obama represents government as the best solution to every social problem in America. I disagree. I think that there are almost always better choices available from the private sector.
I vocalize my feelings. Sometimes I even manage to be polite about it despite the lifetime of theft I’ve been subjected to by government. Obama is a socialist. No doubt about it. Not only does Obama represent socialism, he represents socialism at the point of a gun. If I disagree with him and his policies I still have to pay for them. Does that make sense in the proverbial land of the free? I think not.
I am not offput by Obama’s undeniable popularity - I think it is a natural result of our mediocre two party political system and our resulting mediocre education system. And I think the people of the United States of America will get exactly the kind of President they deserve. I am increasingly tempted to stop participating in the system altogether, but for now I’ll keep writing my opinions and hoping there are enough others who think we need change but not Obama’s kind of change. Nor McCain’s. They’re both crappy choices.
5 July 30th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
AMB711 says:
I try to avoid politics as much as possible but when you are in a presidential election year you are forced to get involved. I come from the perspective of a skeptic. I am very skeptical of anyone who is closed mouth or two faced about any major issue. Who do we trust? How do we really distinguish the two presidential candidates from each other? Can we fit John McCain into any one category when he consistently moves side to side on issues? Can we fit Obama in any slots we can be comfortable with when he too speaks on both sides of an issue. Will either of these gentlemen take a firm stand on anything?
What this country needs is a leader that will stand firm and not waiver no matter what happens. Take a stand and STAND firm so that WE THE PEOPLE can pinpoint the one presidential candidate we can rely to bring us out of this recession and into prosperity for all the masses (not just the rich masses).
We also need a leader in the White House that is truly a Commander in Chief. This person would care more about the troops that are at his command and do something about their physical and mental well-being. I am greatly concerned about the military and how they are being treated both at the battle ground and at home. There is an increasing number of military suicides taking the lives of our men and women on our homeland. There needs to be more awareness of this and our leadership (and potential leaders) need to be proactive to prevent these suicides. I make some suggestions for an alternative to suicide on my website: http://www.igomysteryshopping.com/.
6 July 30th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Chamberlin says:
Aha…
I’ve painted you with the red paintbrush of the GOP. I do apologize for that. I arrived at your blog post directly via StumbleUpon so I wasn’t familiar with the rest of the blog.
My responses:
1. Gotcha
2. Gotcha
3. Yep
4. I was asserting that the GOP had been using these tactics, not you.
5. Are you a Libertarian?
I don’t think he thinks government is the best solution to every social ill in the country and will do it by gunpoint, not even speaking figuratively. Don’t you think that assertion is a little absolute and extreme? Don’t confuse populist policies with socialism.
I fully support your vocalizing your feelings. Please keep it up. I can identify with what you are saying to some extent but I do think what you are asking for is unrealistic. From what I’m reading, you don’t think you should have to pay taxes to a government that does things in a way that you disagree with. The problem is, if the Federal government only collected taxes for those who support it fully, what would we have left? I hate paying taxes to but I needed an education when growing up and I need roads to get from place to place. Some things are more efficient (though not ideal) when made public. Imagine if all of the roads were privately owned. Would there be toll booths everywhere? Imagine if all of the schools were private… Think of all of the people whose kids would be without an education and the problems that would bring. Some might say “well if they can’t afford the private school for their kids, screw ‘em - that’s their fault”. The problem is, this will be the case for a fairly large portion of the population - not everyone can be wealthy enough to afford private schools and you will have to share the country with a lot of uneducated people.
When I read “private sector” I think corporations. So its either the government or the corporations that handle the building blocks of our society. I can understand why the government hasn’t earned your respect and trust - a lot of times, I don’t trust it either but I trust corporations much much less. Look at the average salary of a corporate CEO and how much it has increased over the past ten years. Imagine having to pay a higher toll on a road because some executive retired and they gave him a $100 million golden parachute.
It seems to me that as voters, we have to choose whether our society is run by an elected body - the government or the corporations - which we “elect” via our purchasing dollar. I’ll never be comfortable with having corps run everything so my vote goes to the candidate who best intends to run it to benefit the people. The Republicans, whom I know you don’t count yourself as among, have made it pretty clear that they think the less accountable the corporations are, the better. The Democrats (and Obama) have their faults too but I think they stand for you and I a lot more than the Republicans.
7 July 30th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
kitanis says:
Chamberlin
“When I read “private sector” I think corporations. So its either the government or the corporations that handle the building blocks of our society. I can understand why the government hasn’t earned your respect and trust - a lot of times, I don’t trust it either but I trust corporations much much less. Look at the average salary of a corporate CEO and how much it has increased over the past ten years. Imagine having to pay a higher toll on a road because some executive retired and they gave him a $100 million golden parachute.”
Please.. understand me. I can see that the liberal left use Corporations debate as the evil boogey man to convince the left leaning people and the poor that without government, we would be in Chaos.
When I worked as a civil servant in a government agency, I had a co-worker who went out of her way to tell me a Corporation horror story, took me two months to figure out that she got these news bits word for word from Air America radio and ABC news.
I agree that CEO pay is out of control.. I got into a very heated discussion in my buisness ethics class in school last year with my teacher about it. But TRY as I might.. I can find nothing in our Constition that every elected official swears to protect and follow where it says that its the responsibility to of the Federal Government to control or limit a corporation from doing its day to day buisness. Government can derive taxes from that corporation as it dose its buisness.. thats it. The CEO Pay problem is something that the INVESTORS and the Board of Directors of a corporation needs to fix.. But human nature and apathy are a very strong emotion. Somehow the larger corporations has started this process of attracting CEO’s by offering them extreme ammounts of money and stock options to people to run their companies.. some into the ground. Only a couple from Enron get their just deserts in this.. and one of them died from natural causes before the government could throw him into the prison.
But that dose not relate to saying that we must elect a soclialist or democrat to control corporations via government. Look at our democrat controled house and senate have done now.. Both the Republicans and Democrats have spent more and more money than we take in.. and then blaim each other. Too me, that is WORSE than some guy who gets alot of money to be a CEO because they are spending money from the taxpayers pockets, not the profits from a buisness. I blaim the House and Senate for MUCH of what is happening nowdays more than Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, or Bush, Jr have done.
8 July 30th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Coralie Solange says:
Chamberlin,
#5: Bingo!
I’m not going to pretend to speak for Trevor, but coming from a similar mindset as him I will speak to my own view of the situation. Public school is middle class welfare, plain and simple. It’s forcing those who don’t have children to subsidize the education of others’ children–others who, perhaps, do deserve a break, but who also wouldn’t generally need the middle class welfare were they not being taxed out the butt to fund wars, bureaucracy and more of the welfare state. In other words, shouldn’t the break that they deserve come in the form of a much smaller, sustainable government instead of at the expense of the rest of society? Also, this is where Trevor speaks specifically about Obama’s policy (or lack thereof). http://willtoexist.com/ready-obamanomics_1415/
PS~Why is it always about the roads? I’m so sick of hearing how we’d have no roads without the government! If the government just magically ceased to exist, I assure you that intelligent as we are, we’d find a way to get from point a to point b.
9 July 30th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Trevor says:
Chamberlin,
Yes, I am a libertarian. Just take away the capital L. I’m also a deist, transhumanist, and a citizen soldier. There are some other labels you could throw my way if you wanted. Just don’t call me a Republican
In my experience, government does everything by gunpoint. If they didn’t then why bother threatening me with financial extortion and jail time if anything is misrepresented on my college loan application. Why is government even involved in that process? Obama will offer me more of these type of forms, wherein I’m forced to sign myself over as an indentured servant to get anything done in life.
That’s mostly how I see it.
As far as Obama not using force to implement his programs I respectfully disagree. All government programs operate via the monopoly on force. I should know since I carry a gun on behalf of government - Georgia National Guard member.
Think of this - to get a student loan in this country you have to fill out a FAFSA (Federal application for student aid). To get the money, I have to sign a document that threatens me with financial extortion and jail time (implemented by force) if I misrepresent anything on the form. The form is mostly useless information the government already has on file. Why is this threatening process necessary?
What will Obama do to mitigate the threats of force in the fine print at the bottom of almost every federal form I’ve ever filled out?
10 July 31st, 2008 at 9:42 am
Coralie Solange says:
Trevor, you forgot to mention that the government coerces employers into acting as tax collector. That one really gets me.