There are a lot of reasons, but in my view the main ones are these:
An unpopular President who has not been effective.
An unpopular war that was poorly prosecuted, especially early on.
A gigantic financial crisis right at the height of election season.
John McCain ran a poor campaign.
Barack Obama ran a very good campaign.
I was struck by two headlines on the New York Times website after the election results were declared:
Racial Barrier Falls as Voters Embrace Call for Change
McCain Loses as Bush Legacy Is Rejected
The question is: was it more of the former or the latter? My answer is more of the latter. Mr. Obama is for hope and change. But hope for what exactly? Change of what kind exactly? He almost became a Rorschach test on which people projected their various dreams and aspirations. But he mainly won because he is not George Bush. There is really a huge range of possibilities of what kind of a President he will be–he could be very good, or very poor, or many places in between. We shall see. But he–and we–will discover very quickly that governing is MUCH harder than campaigning–KSH.
It’s easy to forget McCain was ahead until the Wall Street crisis broke out. That’s what put Obama over. He’s very fortunate.
Senator Obama, along with the Democratic Congress, was elected to one and only one thing: Repair the Economy. If they fail to do this, and I think it likely if they do as promised and raise the tax rate on the investor class (and more particularly if they raise the Capital Gains rate), the Democratic Congress will be out of office in 2010 and the President-Elect’s chances for re-election in 2012 will depend on the quality of his opposition, both from within and without his party (a Clinton insurgency is an inevitability if things do not go well with the economy, and particularly if the press takes the same “we created you; we can destroy you” attitude they have adopted with regard to the current President). It is true that he was nominated as an anti-war candidate, but was elected solely on the economy. If the stock market crash waits two months, Senator McCain wins by at least five points (if for no other reason than because he is not Bush either, and it was a given that Senator Obama was bound and determined to run against President Bush irregardless – a losing strategy had it not been for September’s crash). If the crash occurs six months earlier, Senator Clinton has a good shot against Governor Romney.
As to Senator McCain’s strategy, doubtless he did not do a great job of turning September’s lemons into lemonade; but there are remarkably few politicians who could have pulled it off. I doubt even Reagan could have done it. He lost when the crash hit and the press, joined gleefully by the Democrats – and who could blame them? – effectively blamed problems that date back to the Carter Adminstration on President Bush. The war really had nothing to do with deciding the election. This is about the economy, the economy, and the economy.
President-Elect Obama is the luckiest politician in living memory. The question now is whether he realizes it. Unlikely. Democrats are notorious for believing their own propaganda. I strongly suspect that it will undo them this time around, particularly given the obvious lack of patience on the part of the American voter. They have about a year and a half. Let’s see if they pull it off.
Not to defend or enshrine Pres. Bush, but there were no terrorist attacks on US soil after 9/11. And there were comments from Africa and even celebrities noting that his administration gave more to AIDS relief abroad than prior administrations.
Today, we must do what the Bible commands and start praying earnestly for the President elect and all in authority. I do not think that Sen. Biden’s comment about a coming “test” was a bad one. As Kendall says on this thread, “governing is much harder than campaigning.” And governing a citizenry that can’t disentangle policy from entertainment or rights from entitlements is a herculean task.
Well folks I just go with Hosea 8:7.
RS Bunker
Kendall, I agree completely. The 2008 campaign was Obama vs Bush, not Obama vs McCain. McCain barely showed up to the fight and STILL did very well (although that may be more of an indicator of anti-Obama sentiment than pro-McCain!)
You never really know how people are going to perform until you give them the position.
I’m really amazed that no one has pointed out the obvious – Obama bought the election, plain and simle and worse he did so most likley with $$$ from outside the US. He outspent McCain by 3 or 4 to 1 and I’ve read 20 to 1 in some battleground states.
Had a Republican done ANYTHING similar, the outrage from the MSM would be just relentless.
Yes, governing is harder than campaigning. But a decisive electoral victory indicates, at least for a while, a large reservoir of good will, or in other words, “the consent of the governed.” George W. Bush never had much of the latter.
For all that we stand, for all that we hold dear, for all that we cherish: open war has just been declared. The values we represent are under attack, and those who advance the standard of “change” will not rest until we are all defeated and driven from the face of the earth.
God help us all.
Obama said, “the way they did it the last 8 years didn’t work,” and I think that’s why what happened, happened. The economic meltdown is part of the result of the last 8 years not working and everyone who voted for Obama saw that. The Republicans had an economic head start – a surplus – when Bush took over and ran the car into a bar-ditch. It is a mandate to try something else. I never thought I’d live to see the day an african-american would win the presidency. It’s a great day!
How to lose political power in five easy steps:
1. Run dollar-busting deficits.
2. Prosecute divisive, expensive foreign wars.
3. Feed unsustainable economic bubbles. When they pop, use taxpayer money to bail out your friends.
4. Import a Democratic electorate.
5. Nominate an arrogant, geriatric candidate who promises more of the same.
A quick glace at the electoral map shows that the “racial barrier” did not fall in the most of the states of the Old South.
John McCain’s campaign did nothing to showcase the man who gave one of the most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard – instead he and his advisers waged one of the worst negative campaigns in American history. I wonder how many Americans were turned off by the ads the GOP ran in the week before the election. Describing them as sleazy and reprehensible would be crediting them with more than they deserved.
I honestly think that Obama has won *primarily* because America is rejecting the Bush presidency and the path it has set, with an unpopular and unnecessary war, the clamp down on personal freedoms, etc. However, what I find interesting and hopeful is that I think for most people, Obama’s race really hasn’t been an issue. Even the people who loathe him seem to loathe him for political reasons, not racial ones. I suspect that in any presidential race, a substantial amount of the votes are against the president/party currently in power – then the elected candidate mistakes that for a mandate for all his hobby horses and gets himself in trouble pushing policies that were not desired.
Dan #12, the thing is the “mainstream” news media put the McCain campaign in a Catch 22. The news media was in the tank for Obama and didn’t do their part in vetting him. So it was up to the McCain camp to warn people about Obama. But in doing so, they looked “negative.”
I’ve been in campaigns where the dominant news media is in the tank for a candidate. In that situation, there usually is little choice but to go negative.
(Chris #7, you forgot to mention Obama broke a promise when he avoided public spending restraints.)
Dan (12), I wonder, too, how many people were turned off by the fear-mongering emails? People who gave McCain their “support” in this way would have done better to keep silent altogether. The local Republican party here ran a big full-page add pulling all the stops – it was revolting and did them no good. It was disappointing that this is the kind of campaign the Republicans ran and shows, to me, that they are very out of touch with the man on the street. A co-worker commented to me that this was just the kind of thing Bush had been doing for years – try to make people afraid, hoping they will respond out of that fear instead of their own reasoning. Whether that is an accurate reflection of what Bush has been doing, I think that is how a lot of Americans have perceived his administration. Styling the presidential campaign along the same lines was a big mistake.
The Republicans ran a negative campaign because they didn’t have a positive record to run on given the last eight years of government malfeasance. If John McCain were really a “maverick,” he would have taken a few pages from Dr. Paul’s book to appeal to the country’s conservative-libertarian center of gravity. Of course, McCain is a creature of D.C. He made his contempt for the party’s base in flyover country clear in his speeches in the South Carolina primary.
“Those who advance the standard of ‘change’ will not rest until we are all defeated and driven from the face of the earth” —Bernini [#9]
Preposterous. But what would it take to persuade you otherwise? You’ve have set the bar as low as can be. So it shouldn’t take much to convince you that Obama won’t do away with elections, much less exterminate us, right?
“Nominate an arrogant, geriatric candidate” —Byzantine [#11]
On this point I disagree with you. McCain is not “arrogant.” I’d liked him personally and I still do.
If Obama is elected president, he will nationalize the financial services industry, run destructive fiscal and trade deficits, raise the national debt, prosecute interminable foreign wars, and import Democratic constituencies via immigration policy.
Thanks to the Bush administration and the vile, loathsome, [i]expletive deleted[/i] neo-conservatives from whom he took his policy cues, the Republicans are going to be the minority party into perpetuity. In a better world, heads would be rolling in the GOP and conservative opinion press. Instead, they will re-tool as prudent social democrats and argue strenuously that the coming national health care plan should pay for gender re-assignment surgery only on the written order of no less than two doctors. Never did a political party deserve to lose more.
What country in the past 100 years has done away with elections?
Jaw. Dropping. Hubris.
“”I don’t know what more we could have done to win this election,” McCain said. “I’ll leave that to others to determine. … I won’t spend a moment in the future regretting what might have been.”
Maybe running as an actual [i]conservative[/i] rather than fretting over minutiae in tax plans? Perhaps [i]some[/i] recognition of the fact that spending billions of dollars to bomb Iraq and rebuild Iraq was not sound policy? Maybe acknowledge that people mortified at the government’s importation of a new electorate may have a point rather than sneeringly condemning them as reactionary bigots? Perhaps [i]not[/i] sponsor campaign legislation that outlaws the sort of grassroots activism that put your party in power?
No, Senator. By all means, we wouldn’t want you to regret a thing.
Byzantine [#21]: McCain has soldiered through weeks that must have felt like a waking nightmare. I don’t fault him for not wanting to publicly second-guess himself right after losing.
McCain lost plainly and simply because despite all efforts to the contrary, he was identified with George W. Bush; Obama won because he was not. Obama said ” change” and ” hope” and a majority of Americans went wild. He delivers a good speech ( he’s not all that good off the cuff), and you can tell he’s speaking English. Given how poorly Bush is regarded, it is amazing McCain did as well as he did.
re 23: That was borne out by a survey result I saw in the Wash. Post this morning. Of some very large fraction of people (don’t remember the exact number, but it was in the 50% range IIRC) who were associating McCain with Bush, 9 out of 10 intended to vote for Obama.
Obama won for several reasons.
The first is that Bush may have been most incompetent president in history. He had some good proposals, but his incuriosity, his stubbornness, and his abdication of authority did him in. Yes – Obama was lucky.
Obama was against two institutions: powerful ones. The Republican machine, and the Democratic party. Remember that Obama was the outsider. Obama did what democrats had failed to do effectively for a few generations: organize.
Obama also won because he ran the strongest campaign in history. This demonstrates some of his executive ability.
Obama also speaks English better than most Americans. He’s the strongest communicator we’ve seen since Reagan.
Obama was rarely reactive and impulsive. He had a plan and stuck to it.
And McCain’s campaign was awful. Why was it awful? NOTHING it attacked Obama with stuck. Obama was prepared, defended himself successfully, and built up the strongest ground game.
Obama is the right person at the right time.
#25 Yeah, and it helps if noone in the mainstream media bothers to bring up anything that might be damaging to their preconceived annointing of Obama as “the chosen one”. You had reporters digging through every trash can in Alaska to keep up sleazy, groundless attacks on the VP candidate for the Republicans without so much as doing any kind of serious questioning of Obama’s open association with socialists, communists (e.g. The New Party) and former terrorists (e.g The Weather Underground). If John McCain had his coming out to candidacy party in the home a former Klansman do you think it would have generated the same media non-event? Look at what happened to Trent Lott when he made an emotional off the cuff comment at a party celebrating Strom Thurmond’s 100th Birthday.
There was no serious questioning of Obama’s going back on his pledge to accept public campaign financing, nor the unprecedented millions of dollars he raised in donations below $500. There was no serious questioning of Obama’s quite extensive association with ACORN and the many accusations and investigations of voter fraud.
Obama won because he has no past.
#26 Are you kidding? the MSM brought up all those issues. I know about it. I read it. But in the end people decided it wasn’t an issue. It didn’t stick. why? Because Obama was organized and responded instantaneously. Note that Obama had plenty of stuff against McCain that he chose not to bring up.
It’s over now, of course….
Now the responses would not be good enough for those who were looking for reasons to oppose Obama. They just needed to be good enough for independents. And they were.
#23,
“McCain lost plainly and simply because despite all efforts to the contrary, he was identified with George W. Bush…”
What were these “efforts to the contrary?” Specifically, what policies of the Bush administration did John McCain pledge to reverse?
You haven’t been mentioning Obama’s charisma. The first time I saw him on TV, I said, “That’s our next president.” He is inspirational. I still didn’t vote for him and wouldn’t vote for him mostly based on his pro-abortion stance. But he’s a born leader.
That’s interesting, #30. I can’t see what you see in him, myself. I wouldn’t follow him across a street, but I would follow the experienced John McCain.
Anyway – just thought I ‘d say that from outside, it rather looks like what happened, happened because so many American voters chose to do what they came to believe the ‘rest of the world’ wanted them to do. Not what is good for their nation, but what they think others think they should do. So much for being a beacon on the hill!
#25 “Obama was against the democratic machine”? Be real. Obama was crowned by the democratic machine soon after he appeared on the scene for several reasons. First, Richard M. Daley ( mayor of Chicago) did not want to make the same mistake his daddy, Richard J. , had made years before when he dissed a young job seeker by the name of Jesse Jackson. Jesse reamined a thorn in the elder Daley’s side for the remainder of his life. Also, Obama brings attention to Chicago which, as the city that works, builds, rebuilds, etc, needs federal money. If the 2016 Olympics get awarded to Chicago, Daley will be expecting serious money ( did you think he organized the Election evening party in Grnat Park out of the goodness of his heart? And of course, that brings up the Clintons, etc. My take on it is that the Kennedy family’s endorsement ( Caroline started it) had more to do with the idea of JFK’s legacy for civil rights than anything else. Clinton, you might recall, was held so highly in civil rights circles that some even joked that he was ” the first black president”. I think that the Kennedy’s feared that a second Clinton in the presidency would solidify Cltinon’s reputation and ecclipse the JFK civil rights legacy, so much so that they threw their chips in with Barak Obama. So Obama against the democratic machine? Not quite.
# 29 “Efforts to the Contrary”: GWB was absent from the Republican convention. He was never referred to by the McCain campaign. McCain talked about his opposition to the Iraq war plans in conjunction with his supoport for the surge z ( which came from Petraeus not GWB or Condi Rice). Grnated the efforts to distance himself were feeble and rested more on throwing around terms like “maverick” than on “here’s where the president and I differ…”
TACit (#30), I’d be very surprised if many Americans went into the voting booths asking themselves what the rest of the world wanted them to do.
#28 John Wilkins –
just out of curiosity, have you seen the video of the 2004 congressional hearings where all the Republicans (including Chris Shays, who lost last night) are arguing for regulation of Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae and all the Democrats are arguing against it?
Just wondering. Most liberals I’ve talked to have not yet seen it.
I certainly didn’t ask myself that when I filled out my absentee ballot and mailed it. I think, however, there was a good deal of subliminal suggestion mainly through the MSM coverage – not to mention the longer term effects of liberal education – that could have nudged people away from the authentically American choice on offer and toward the one-worlders’ choice.
35 Sidney
I’d like to see that. Please post a link.
Also re 26: YMMV as to how sleazy and/ro groundless the attacks on Palin were. Certainly a lot of bile-colored upper middle snobbery was poured out against her. But I think her nomination was a serious mistake. Regardless of the details of her personal life, her relative lack of experience played against her. And she is a very, very polarizing figure, which was exactly the kind of VP candidate McCain didn’t need. Back when she was chosen I did some checking over the possibilities, of which there were several if McCain really wanted a woman. Everything came back to Palin’s choice arising out of almost anything except her appeal as a politician to undecided voters.
Here is one, 37: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
Looking back over these comments it strikes me that #7 about the rate of spending is probably most accurate, and underlies numerous other reasons given. Why else would, e.g., China be openly rejoicing now?
One way in which it may possibly be good if Americans elected who they thought others wanted them to is, if African nations and politicians are lifted up by this outcome. It will be interesting, though, to find out how Africans receive a US First Lady who claimed she didn’t have a reason to be proud of her own country until one day last January.
From my ST posting:
The mass media is the king-makers in American politics. As long as the press is as much invested in the success of the Democratic Party’s liberal ideals and liberalism as they presently are, Republicans and conservatives will continue to be short-changed.
For as long as I can remember, the press loved John McCain, especially whenever he was doing their dirty job – undermining Bush, Republicans and bashing Conservative and serious Christians. Then, as soon as he became the Republican candidate (which the press wanted, loved and endorsed – wonder why?), all Hell broke loose.
The same John McCain whom the press had praised (over the years) and “respected” for “reaching across the aisle” became a monster overnight (thanks to the mass media) as soon as he faced a real Liberal in this election. McCain was the maverick for as long as he challenging his fellow Republicans – including GWB.
Who could believe that the same John McCain who formed Gang-of…… (take you pick) at the drop of a hat to help move things along was cast as a partisan Bush-following conservative? Where is the credit to McCain for remaining faithful to his pledge on accepting Campaign Financing?
Now that the press has succeeded in defeating McCain, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them switching back to insincerely saying nice things about him and praising him for accepting defeat with dignity. They have once again succeeded in their game. They know what they are doing. But unfortunately some of us (conservatives) still don’t get it.
This is no different from what is happening in our Church: the Liberals would love you as a conservative for as long as you are agreeing with them and bashing the “mean-spirited” conservatives who unapologetically disagree with the Liberal agenda.
I am sorry for those who still don’t get it.
These are my personal opinion.
Fr. Kingsley Jon-Ubabuco
#30 My wife, who has an astute sense of people, when she first saw Mr Obama on tv said that that man is evil. She also noted that he is charismatic (not her exact words but the intent of them). Mr. Obama is much like a con-man – he will tell you what you want and take what he wants.
[i] Please consider carefully what you write. An ad hominem attack on either candidate serves no purpose. [/i]
-Elf Lady
#42 Interesting, your wife’s reaction. I didn’t start getting scared till some friends shared video clips of children singing an anthem to Obama, and another clip of young African-American high school boys marching into a locker-room lock-step singing, “Alpha, Omega, Alpha, Omega” in a paen to Obama. That clinched my determination to vote against him, although I had already decided on the basis of his dismal pro-abortion record. Frankly, those clips were frightening. The man does have charisma.
#32 Obama was part of the Hyde Park democrats who weren’t trusted by Daley, not historically. They weren’t friends or enemies.
Daley really got to know Obama after 2004.
Kendall Harmon linked to a program on Harold Washington a few years ago. If you want to know who Obama wanted to emulate, you should read (and listen) about him. Washington defeated the Daley machine.
But Obama defeated the Clinton wing of the Democratic party.
Which was, really, the Democratic party. Until Obama won the primary.
Nobody can gainsay Obama’s intelligence or his beguiling eloquence (with a teleprompter – away from one, he fumbles and gaffes).
The organization of his campaign (largely by Axelrod) was extremely competent, and highly controlled. They spent, spent and spent – and they had a much larger staff than Kerry did in Ohio. Endless TV ads.
And none can gainsay that the MSM was 90% on his side?
Where was Karl Rove when the Republicans needed him?
I think I began to feel the ground shift during McCain’s acceptance speech during his convention: he made a long string of comparisons between his positions and Obama’s that were expressed in a manner to elicit loud, sustained boos.
“I will do ________; but [i]he[/i] will do ________”
“Booooooooo!”
“I will make sure that __________; but [i]he[/i] will continue ____________”
“Boooooooo!”
I said at the time that this was a strange and risky choice: he could have just as easily expressed these comparisons the other way around in order to elicit loud cheers for his own positions. I felt the same reaction during the first debate, when McCain said again and again that Obama doesn’t understand the issues–he even snarked that Obama doesn’t know the difference between strategy and tactics. In contrast, Obama said again and again, “I agree with John,” or “I think John is right about that.” Pundits said at the time that Obama had helped McCain by confirming some of his positions, but his tone was interpreted by some undecided viewers as being respectful and cooperative, compared to McCain’s dismissive petulance. As much as McCain trumpeted his willingness to work “across the aisle,” his tone made the opposite argument.
Again and again over the last month, news reports of McCain and Palin rallies have been characterized by angry denunciations by the candidates and loud boos from the crowds. That may have been sweet music for the deeply committed voters who attended the raillies, but I have a feeling it drove away the undecideds who watched on TV.
I support most of Obama’s positions and happily voted for him, although I respect Sen. McCain and wish he had defeated the current president in 2000. But I’m not talking about policy positions here, just tone. I think McCain and his advisors seriously misjudged the American voters’ desire for change in the way Washington works. McCain claimed to be a champion of bipartisanship–and in many ways, he is–but his campaign celebrated demonization rather than cooperation. In the end, undecided voters looked at Obama and could not see him as the socialist/terrorist had been warned about.
Wow, LadyTenor, you must not have watched any of the Obama rallies. Same exact behavior from them. And did you see the obscene T-shirt about Palin that one of his supporters boasted?
RE: “I wonder how many Americans were turned off by the ads the GOP ran in the week before the election. Describing them as sleazy and reprehensible would be crediting them with more than they deserved.”
Nonsense. McCain closed hard during the few weeks that he finally pointed out just what Obama stood for — so plenty of American people approved of those ads and turned their support to McCain, thanks to those ads.
Obama won for many many reasons. For one thing, Obama did well obscuring what he stood for. In the end, he had to do precisely what Bill Clinton did, which is mitigate his actual stances — though I suspect that Obama will be far more principled in his assertion of socialism and further redistribution of wealth, a large state, the sacrament of abortion, and various other beliefs.
A further big reason — McCain as a moderate never appealed to conservatives. Thankfully this is now starkly evident as one considers the contrast between McCain’s numbers and GWB’s numbers. The Republican turnout was low, as we are learning. And there was a reason for that. Just think what will happen if the Republican Party ever actually decides to run a conservative!
I voted for neither candidate. I’ve been able to remain happily sidelined during all of this, and will watch with great interest the decisions of both Obama’s staff/team and those of the Republican Party.
My hope is that there will be a general bloodbath in the Republican Party and cleansing of all the “centrist” non-conservatives.
Looks as if there was a fine start in this election — Dole lost, and my understanding is that the remaining core still in office will be far more appropriately conservative.
In conclusion, one of the principles of the oft-hated Rove has been thoroughly demonstrated.
From here:
http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/nov/04/karl-rove-has-been-vindicated/
[blockquote]John McCain, by contrast, was the Platonic ideal Beltway Pundit-style candidate, and his defeat by Obama ensures that his like will not win a national nomination any time soon, in either party. McCain spent many years establishing himself as a pragmatic moderate, dissenting ad nauseum and without a consistent unifying principle from GOP orthodoxy; McCain had veered to the center simply whenever he felt that the Republican position was too far. McCain held enough positions that were in synch with the conservative base to make him minimally acceptable, but nobody ever regarded him as a candidate to excite the conservative base.
Now, it’s true enough that the partisan environment was terribly challenging for Republicans in 2008. That’s why so many of us on the Republican side were willing to go with McCain in the first place. But here’s the thing: if you believed the Beltway Pundit theory, that shouldn’t matter. If a significant and reliable bloc of voters consistently preferred the moderate, centrist candidate over the more ideological and partisan candidate, in the same way that conservatives prefer the more conservative candidate and liberals prefer the more liberal candidate, you would have a base from which a candidate like McCain could consistently prevail against a candidate like Obama, and partisan identification would be trumped by moderation and proven bipartisanship.
But there is no such base. Centrist, moderate, independent, voters are generally “swing” voters, always have been and always will be. Among those who are at least modestly well-informed, they are a heterogenous lot – some libertarian, some socially conservative but economically populist, some fiscally conservative and socially liberal, some isolationist and anti-immigrant, etc. It’s not possible to make of them a “base” – the only way to approach the center is to lock down the real base at one end or the other of the political spectrum, and then reach out to voters in the middle, understanding the real tradeoff that what appeals to one “swing” voter may be anathema to others.[/blockquote]
I felt sorry for McCain. He’s a good honorable man. And he couldn’t stand up for what he does not believe. He couldn’t be what he was not. The reason why he couldn’t articulate in a coherent, consistent manner conservative economic, governmental, or societal principles is because he doesn’t believe those principles.
All of the pleas by conservative Republicans to please “really say it” were for naught — he just didn’t believe those things.
Doesn’t make him bad or arrogant or even antique. He was what he was. And what he was couldn’t win.
Thanks to John Wilkins (#45) for reminding us of the Harold Washington story. The link is here:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=84
[t19 thread here http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/7878/%5D
It is an excellent presentation and well worth the time.