In the Goldwater Suite

Race to the Finish

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Campaign Avoided Racial Warfare

2:38 PM, November 3, 2008 | Comments (72)

You knew it was going to happen. I’m only surprised it took so long. In Pennsylvania, Sen. John McCain’s must-win blue state, local Republicans now are up with a TV ad linking Sen. Barack Obama to his former pastor, the corrosively race-based Rev. Jeremiah...

Home-Stretch Spin

2:48 PM, October 31, 2008 | Comments (115)

Why It’s Still a Race

8:45 AM, October 29, 2008 | Comments (1,138)

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Howard Fineman

For me, the campaign has ended in the “news nook” at 30 Rock, where I am working the phones for MSNBC’s election night coverage. We’ve just called Ohio and New Mexico for Sen. Barack Obama, which means that it’s all but over. But that is no news to Sen. John McCain and his campaign, which knew from the start that it was not going to be their night.

I know that because I talked to Mark Salter, McCain’s closest, most loyal and longest-serving aide. I reached him at about 7 p.m. Eastern time, before any states had been called. I couldn’t see him, of course, but he sounded to me as if he’d been run over by a truck-or as if he had just been having a good try at the end of a long year.

McCain and his inner circle were hunkered down at the old Biltmore in downtown Phoenix-in the ironically but appropriately named Goldwater Suite.

One reason there was such gloom in the room was this: Florida was and remains in play, and could tip into the Obama column, because of the Hispanic vote in general and the Cuban vote in particular.

A good source of mine in Florida told me at about 8 p.m. that Republicans in the final day of the campaign had placed thousands of automated “robocalls” into the Cuban community-staunchly anti-Communist and Republican-claiming (falsely) that Fidel Castro had “endorsed” Obama!

But, according to Sergio Bendixen, the Democrats’ leading pollster of the Hispanic community, Obama was on course to win 35 percent of the Cuban vote-nearly half again as much as Sen. John Kerry had won in 2004. And that increase alone might be enough to tip the state to Obama.

While the Obama campaign was watching these numbers, they were preparing a huge celebration in Grant Park in Chicago. Watching those preparations made me wonder where former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore were tonight. Well, they are not in Chicago, and have no public events scheduled.

So what, you might ask. Well, it is a trifle strange for the Democrats to celebrate the election of a new president without any evidence of the last (and actually quite popular) presidential administration.

The absence of Clinton and Gore was a sign that the torch had indeed been passed-and that the Baby Boom generation, which had its innings with Clinton, Gore and George W. Bush-was history.

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Member Comments

Posted By: whatisreal? (November 7, 2008 at 7:26 PM)

The Christian right??? A Christian political party! Wow, you know, that is really blasphemy at it's finest. The biblical Christ would really not like that at all. But if you want to be part of all of that, thisis a free country. Just don't expect for other believers to stand by while a political religion trys again to control a free nation. Freedom to believe, freedom to choose what to believe.

While I have my beliefs they are personal and mine. While I live in a country i will never support a religion in government and will fight it. It will never happen again, ever!

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Posted By: yellow tiger (November 6, 2008 at 8:19 PM)

I feel really bad for Senator Mc Cain because it is unlikely that he will run again and win the White

House. I feel that he suffered some age related discrimination because of his age and his past

medical history of skin cancer which he does not have any more. Many people have had a history

of cancer in their lives but once the tumor is removed the cure rate for cancer has improved

greatly. Cancer is not a death sentence any more with early diagnosis and proper treatment. Yet,

the media critics created a myth that somehow Senator Mc Cain would die in office if elected and

that Sarah Palin would become the president. Senator Mc Cain appears to be in good health

and will probably live a long time since medical care has an uncanny ability to keep people

alive.

I admit that Senator Mc Cain's campaign did not have the resources or time commitment that

Senator Obama's campaign did. Obama simply ran a better campaign. He got his message out

early, and developed a groundswell of supporters that were loyal to him in the end. And even

though the secret democrat within me is happy that President elect Obama has won (we can move

forward, get out of Iraq, start mending diplomatic wounds world wide, and start to tackle our own

domestic problems), the outward republican that I am is a little sad for Senator Mc Cain. I wish he

could run again but he probably won't. It will mostly likely be Jeb Bush in 2012, although Senator

Lindsay Graham should consider running. And what about Sen. Bill Frist? The Christian right

movement is not dead, it just needs a new front runner.

In the meantime, I hope President elect Obama doesn't start spend and tax, we have a huge

deficit now and tax increases to offset new spending is a disincentive to entrepreneurship and

wealth creation. Just ask any salesperson who lives on comission.