Mccain Only Has Himself to Blame for the Election

While Barack Obama’s victory Tuesday night in the presidential election was both historic and impressive, to say the least, McCain supporters must come to terms that John McCain only has himself to blame. John McCain, in his bid for the White House, made numerous mistakes all in hopes that something would slow the tidal wave of support Obama was gaining, and gaining at tremendous speeds.

Let’s start with some of his major mistakes. Firstly, Sarah Palin’s nomination was meant to bolster the Republican Party’s support for Mr. McCain. While Ms. Palin is a tremendously talented Governor and a worthy adversary against many a Democratic foe, she just never really was that magic bullet the Republicans were looking for. Don’t get me wrong, she is very accomplished and she’s an every woman, but unfortunately she wasn’t prepped enough to be second in command. Then let’s not forget the god-awful interviews she gave to CBS, ABC and the like. Plus she should have been vetted more. Not just more, but vetted in general. The only reason, THE ONLY REASON, Mr. McCain picked Ms. Palin was so that he could take the Hillary supporters away from Mr. Obama. Unfortunately, it backfired, and backfired tremendously. If Mr. McCain wanted his Vice Presidential pick to be taken seriously, he should have gone with someone who was intelligent, well-spoken, and had more experience than being Mayor of 6300 people and Governor of a couple hundred-thousand folks. What he should have done was pick someone such as Mitt Romney, who has experience, and maybe then the Republicans wouldn’t have left him in droves.

Mr. McCain also made some terrible choices when it came to voters. While, under normal circumstances, the majority of the voters would be either be elderly voters or the religious right, this election was dramatically different. Instead of pandering to one demographic, the conservative right, Mr. McCain should have gone after a plethora of demographics, such as young voters, black voters, women voters, Latino voters, and middle-income voters. Unfortunately, he was too busy touting how “conservative” he was, when everyone knew he wasn’t the least bit conservative. Since most Republicans would be voting for Mr. McCain solely based on the fact that he’s a Republican, there was no need to convert the already converted. And in doing so, he kept narrowing down the Republican Party, until it became just the Ultra-Conservatives and the Religious Right.

Speaking of pandering to conservatives, Mr. McCain also made the mistake of trying to convince conservatives he was just like George W. Bush. Under normal circumstances, convincing a group of Republicans you are just like their last Republican President would ideally work. Unfortunately, these aren’t normal circumstances and the person Mr. McCain is comparing himself to have the lowest approval ratings of any President in history and happens to be presiding over an economy which is the worst since the Great Depression. Not really the smartest move you can make. Instead of collaborating with George Bush, Mr. McCain should have been distancing himself from the worst President in the eyes of the American public.

And let’s not forget the Economy, as Mr. McCain happened to do so well. Every day the economy was worsening and every day Mr. McCain was ignoring the fact and continued to try to bolster votes by saying that we had a great economy. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, realized that voters wanted a solution to the economic mess, instead of being told we were “doing just fine.” McCain even went so far as to say the fundamentals of the economy were “strong” then two hours later recanted his statements and said the economy was in shambles. If you’re going to stick to your guns about how well the economy is doing and how we’re not losing jobs at an alarming rate, then maybe do it when the economy is actually doing well. If he had just owned up to the fact that the economy wasn’t doing so well, and came up with a solution, then the poll numbers may have been closer. Also, maybe don’t pull a stunt where you say you’re suspending your campaign until a deal is reached in the Bailout Plan and then continue the campaign without a deal being reached. That tends to not send all that great of a signal to the American people, who may now feel that they were duped and the stunt was nothing more than a political ploy, which it was.

Now, not everything Mr. McCain did was terribly wrong, he just was so hell-bent on winning an election that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. Too bad for him, he was coming into a campaign where the Republican Party was loathed and the sitting President was just as equally disliked. I’m sure he knew that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to win this election, but he stayed in it and went down swinging. Too bad the swings he took were too little and too late.