In the wake of Obama's victory, Princeton's Julian E. Zelizer wrote an essay about the reasons McCain floundered. "Worst Campaign Ever?"
asked the provocative headline, a question that had hundreds of readers
-- mostly self-proclaimed conservatives -- offering their own takes on
what went wrong for Mr. McCain. Think of it as our version of an exit
poll, or at least, an inside ear at what happened behind the curtains
on Tuesday.
First off, there was the maverick's veep choice. Oh,
Sarah Palin. A majority of the comments, perhaps unsurprisingly, looked
something like this: "John McCain is an incredible man and a true American. Sarah Palin is a joke," one reader said, adding that: "I wanted to vote for him and ended up having to vote against the prospect of her. Sad really."
To be fair, there were a couple comments that defended Mrs. Palin, but
both angles are fascinating because they get at whether Americans vote
based on vice presidential candidates. Conventional wisdom says No, but
comments on Zelizer's piece suggest otherwise. "I left the
Republican Party because I was tired of dumb people and dumb
politicians. Let there be no doubt, Sarah Palin in the one politician
on the political landscape who is able to make G.W. Bush look somewhat
bright," said one nouveau liberal. "McCain's choice of Palin
was insulting and offensive. I have to admit that I wanted to vote for
McCain, I really did. But he made that impossible when he introduced
Stupid into his campaign platform."
For others, it wasn't
Palin herself, but the symbolism of that choice as something
manipulative and malicious. We all can admit that the Alaskan Governor added some much-needed energy and excitement to the GOP
ticket. But once that flame died down -- and Katie Couric flared up --
readers were annoyed by the political malfeasance. "Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber," started one comment, "When
I heard McCain refer to Joe as an "American hero," and when he said,
"When I go to Washington, I'm taking Joe with me," I knew it was over
for me. No question that I could even consider giving him my vote. And
I've always liked John McCain, too." Others called up the Joe the Plumber scenario as evidence that McCain was grasping for straws, that he didn't have a concrete message to deliver to the viewers, especially once the economy faltered. "He politicized the Wall Street debacle and showed that he was willing to do anything to be Prez.," wrote one voter, while another added: "McCain lost because he didn't know why he was running and clearly could not articulate why he wanted to be President."
Despite
that, McCain's fundamentalist base remained committed until November 4
-- a bloc of voters that many independent and undecided commenters
said they did not want to associate with by voting red. "He sold
out his principles (in my opinion) to appeal to a party "base" of
ignorant, intolerant and enthusiastic mix of anti-science religious
fundamentalists," wrote one commenter, before backtracking: "I hope that description has not descended to the level of name-calling, but that's how I see it." Many
others were more tempered in their criticisms, but still felt alienated
by the strategy employed by McCain and crew in the final months. "The
true problem is that the Republicans tried to serve only their far
right constituents, when most of the country lies in the middle," wrote one reader who felt that McCain was a "good man" who "should have done better in this election." This was echoed by dozens of others who agreed that Obama merely played a better game at catering to average Americans. "The majority of voters in this country fall somewhere in the middle. Obama realized that, and he played to them -- to us," said
one reader, concluding that picking Senator Joe Lieberman as a vice
presidential candidate would only have helped the ticket. Adds another
reader: "McCain wanted to pick Lieberman, but could not. Instead he picked someone who could see Russia from her house."
For yet another cohort, it had nothing to do with
fundamentalism, nor Sarah Palin, nor McCain's lack of state-strategy.
It had to do with us -- the media. "McCain made mistakes
during the campaign but it is fairly clear that he had the deck stacked
against him with the mainstream media," declared one reader. "The media overall were clearly looking to elect Obama, and that's a major handicap to overcome."
Others agreed, saying that McCain probably shouldn't have let Palin
talk to Katie Couric, but that the MSM got in the way of McCain and his
message -- especially as it pertained to Wall Street. "McCain lost because the media was in the bag for Obama from the start and also because of the timing of the economic blow-up," said one comment. "There was nothing his campaign could do to overcome these two obstacles."
And in the end, he didn't overcome those obstacles. But maybe it wasn't that bad, as many readers reminded Zelizer on the comment board. "McCain's campaign is definitely not the worse ever," argued one reader. "Just
look at the results, McCain got 174 electoral votes, which is more than
Bush Sr. (168) and Bob Dole (159). And Goldwater, whom you mentioned in
the article, got trounced by LBJ, getting only 52 electoral votes." And as one reader reminded, there was also the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore failed to win his home state of Tennessee.
So, in that case, well done Arizona.
