• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Why Obama won

Status
Not open for further replies.
Yeah, I think Davefoc made a mistake in leaving off that Obama ran a simply Brilliant campaign. Yeah, having a lot of money helps. but knowing how to spend it is very important. A lot of candidates have spent huge amounts of money but still ran badly.
Whoever was the strategist for the Obama campaign can pretty much write his own ticket as a political consultant now.
 
I'd add an item 1a. McCain's response to the crisis was clueless. He announced how sound the economy was, before deciding it was "cratering", whereupon he "raced back to Washington" by hanging around doing TV interviews about how important he was racing back to Washington, in which he thrust himself into the limelight by claiming to put country before politics, he bounced Obama by claiming it before he did, he suspended his campaign by continuing it, and he wasn't going to debate ... until he blinked. The effect he gave (to me at any rate) was of a man playing politics with a crisis and doing it very badly.

Now up to that point I had strongly believed that McCain, if put to the test, would turn out to be a good President; and also that the argument from experience was salient (though not enough to sway me personally). At that point I started thinking that maybe "maverick" meant "erratic", and began to contemplate how much executive experience McCain had as compared to his opponent. And once you start thinking like that, and considering the quality of the two campaigns as evidence of who shows better judgement ...

There then followed the first debate, in which Obama managed to come across as reasonable, level-headed, calm, and moderate, whereupon the McCain campaign actually put out a video of clips of Obama saying: "John is right". Who were they targetting there? Obama debated perfectly: he appealed to moderates and to the many people who said that they weren't going to make their minds up until the debates.

Barack HUSSEIN Obama, the scary MUSLIN TURRIST who you hadn't heard of this time last year, managed to come out of this looking like the reliable pick and the safe pair of hands to anyone who didn't already think that he was the Antichrist.
 
Dr Adequate said:
I'd add an item 1a. McCain's response to the crisis was clueless. He announced how sound the economy was, before deciding it was "cratering", whereupon he "raced back to Washington" by hanging around doing TV interviews about how important he was racing back to Washington, in which he thrust himself into the limelight by claiming to put country before politics, he bounced Obama by claiming it before he did, he suspended his campaign by continuing it, and he wasn't going to debate ... until he blinked. The effect he gave (to me at any rate) was of a man playing politics with a crisis and doing it very badly.

Now up to that point I had strongly believed that McCain, if put to the test, would turn out to be a good President; and also that the argument from experience was salient (though not enough to sway me personally). At that point I started thinking that maybe "maverick" meant "erratic", and began to contemplate how much executive experience McCain had as compared to his opponent. And once you start thinking like that, and considering the quality of the two campaigns as evidence of who shows better judgement ...

There then followed the first debate, in which Obama managed to come across as reasonable, level-headed, calm, and moderate, whereupon the McCain campaign actually put out a video of clips of Obama saying: "John is right". Who were they targetting there? Obama debated perfectly: he appealed to moderates and to the many people who said that they weren't going to make their minds up until the debates.

Barack HUSSEIN Obama, the scary MUSLIN TURRIST who you hadn't heard of this time last year, managed to come out of this looking like the reliable pick and the safe pair of hands to anyone who didn't already think that he was the Antichrist.
Click to expand...

This goes to the difficulty I had putting the reasons into categories. There was overlap and ambiguity about what things went where. I was thinking of this as more part of item 3, Obama's charisma, by which I meant to include things like his calmness in difficult times and the fact that McCain wasn't.

This also goes to McCain's inability to make a case for his ideas. I think some of McCain's ideas were definitely good if not better than Obama's. His approach to health care looked right to me. The country needs to break the tie in between employment and health insurance. It is part of the Democratic idea that you can just go impose stuff on employers and it's free.

McCain also needed to make the case that the current financial crisis wasn't caused by the failure of free markets it was caused by the failure of government organizations, out of control spending, out of control cronyism, and out of control federal borrowing. He needed to make the case that the answer wasn't to fix problems caused by government excess with more government excess. Unfortunately for him the principal perpitrators of government excess were the Republicans and he needed to explain why he was going to be a different kind of Republican something to my eyes he was completely incapable of doing.

I don't think intellectually he ever came to grips with that. In the end, he was just one more of the cronies who didn't think he'd done anything all that bad with his Keating Five involvement. His potential choice of Lieberman also went to his inability to make a case for limited government. He could spout the slogans but he didn't understand the intellectual underpinnings so he was perfectly willing to pick what is a standard Democrat except for his Israel first ideas to be his Vice Presidential running mate.
 
davefoc said:
This goes to the difficulty I had putting the reasons into categories. There was overlap and ambiguity about what things went where. I was thinking of this as more part of item 3, Obama's charisma, by which I meant to include things like his calmness in difficult times and the fact that McCain wasn't.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is hard to catagorize. Nonetheless, with respect, I think that's a bit of a stretch of the word "charisma".

Showing character and making the right choices isn't "charisma", Obama didn't do it by being all sparkly while riding on his rainbow-colored unicorn.
 
McCain may have indeed won..or at least come close to winning..if not for two simple words:

Sarah Palin.
 
To be honest, I think the consistent McCain's constant claim of being a 'maverick' probably hurt him more than he (clearly) thought it helped him. In my opinion, It simply summons up an image of someone who is unstable, even if that is not its correct definition. In a time of great economic stress, people want their leader to be calm and measured, not appearing erratic like McCain did when he suspended his campaign only to unsuspend it 48 hours later. If McCain had acted like he did in his concession speech last night (honourable, dignified), he could have been in with a good chance.

The following photo really does epitomise the McCain and Obama campaigns:

mctongue-pic.jpg
 
Dr Adequate said:
There then followed the first debate, in which Obama managed to come across as reasonable, level-headed, calm, and moderate, whereupon the McCain campaign actually put out a video of clips of Obama saying: "John is right". Who were they targetting there? Obama debated perfectly: he appealed to moderates and to the many people who said that they weren't going to make their minds up until the debates.
Click to expand...

My main impression of the first debate was of McCain repeatedly saying, "Senator Obama doesn't understand... " and Obama giving responses that showed he understood perfectly well; he just didn't agree with John McCain.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Yes, it is hard to categorize. Nonetheless, with respect, I think that's a bit of a stretch of the word "charisma".

Showing character and making the right choices isn't "charisma", Obama didn't do it by being all sparkly while riding on his rainbow-colored unicorn.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but my original description of the category encompassed a little more than just charisma.

3. Obama's thoughtful charismatic style more appealing than McCain's bluster. Also included here are McCain's various verbal gaffes.
Click to expand...

But I agree the category might not have quite been large enough to include the issue of not running off like a chicken with your head cut off when a serious issue arises.

Regardless, there weren't many opportunities to show how either candidate might perform with a real world problem, but when the opportunity came up Obama looked better. George Will even wrote a column about it. It was one of several times that Will seem to come close to endorsing Obama.

I wondered why he didn't. Would his access have been reduced by backing a Democratic candidate? The Republicans weren't likely to have that much access to grant for awhile and he's been pretty independent anyway to be afraid of what the Republicans might do to him. Maybe he was truly undecided. I think I'll ask him the next time we go out for a beer.

Oh and thanks for the respect. It wasn't necessary but I appreciated it.
 
NotJesus said:
My main impression of the first debate was of McCain repeatedly saying, "Senator Obama doesn't understand... "
Click to expand...
McCain kept recycling his stump speech.

He kept saying: "Senator Obama doesn't understand ..." this, that, and the other, and also saying "I know how to ..." this, that, and the other, and it so made people clap at his rallies.

It didn't go down so well with undecideds.
 
parky76 said:
McCain may have indeed won..or at least come close to winning..if not for two simple words:

Sarah Palin.
Click to expand...

maybe but bad mortgages were two words that were more instrumental. ALthough I believe if the economy had hung on for a few more months Obama would still have won because of Iraq although it would have been much closer.
 
Last edited:
parky76 said:
Yes, and they voted for McCain.
Click to expand...
there are plenty of informed intelligent voters who wanted McCain and plenty of uninformed voters who wanted Obama.
And
there are plenty of informed intelligent voters who wanted Obama and plenty of uninformed voters who wanted McCain.

Neither party has the market cornered on informed voters or uninformed voters
 
Dr Adequate said:
McCain kept recycling his stump speech.

He kept saying: "Senator Obama doesn't understand ..." this, that, and the other, and also saying "I know how to ..." this, that, and the other, and it so made people clap at his rallies.

It didn't go down so well with undecideds.
Click to expand...

Exactly, instead of using his opportunity to speak to the American People as a chance to explain the reasons why he thought his ideas had merit he spent the time putting out the same old Republican sound bites. And the problem with that was that the Republicans had been in power for eight years and stuff had not gone well. Without some sort of explanation about what had gone wrong and how he was going to do something different he just wasn't going to get enough of the swing voters that he was already in trouble with to go along with him.
 
Regarding race; as I watched the election results last night on NBC, they actually did a breakdown in one state (I can't recall which though) as to who admitted they voted based on race. There was a vast majority (something like ninety to ninety-five percent) of blacks who voted for Obama because of his race, yes, but there were also at least thirty percent of whites who voted for Obama based on his race, leaving McCain with a much smaller percentage of voters who voted based on race.
 
NotJesus said:
My main impression of the first debate was of McCain repeatedly saying, "Senator Obama doesn't understand... " and Obama giving responses that showed he understood perfectly well; he just didn't agree with John McCain.
Click to expand...

For better or for worst it was several things:

personality: Obama's speeches were much better than McCain's when you look at their presentation. Obama's an excellent orator, McCain spent much of his campaign subdued, and particularly in the debates, he simply did not attack Obama as aggressively on the issues as he should have. McCain started to pick back up near the end, but at that point it was essentially too little too late.

Campaigns: Obama had much more organization, and a helluva allot more money to spend on his campaign activities than McCain did. I'm personally against the way Obama made his decisions for the funding, but that aside, he had the money and the resources, and the following behind him. McCain simply didn't

Outgoing president: I'm not ready to say Palin is the reason McCain lost, although some people did vote Obama because of that choice, I think if Bush's approval ratings hadn't been so low McCain might could have still pulled a win. But Bush's reputation pretty much screwed the party this election cycle and the democratic party was able to capitalize on that to gain more voters (this doesn't include all the new voters that sprang up under Obama's campaign).

And frankly the concerns over the economy overshadowed McCain's strongest points in foreign policy...

Probably much more that can be said, but those are my impressions... not much I can say without repeating, but as a McCain voter and knowing how the Bush term panned out the results aren't particularly surprising...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom