I think it is appropriate to interject an additional question. Assuming Obama wins (and if he wins big, i. e., with a large enough popular vote to be considered to have a mandate), I believe there will be a lot of post election discussion of why the McCain/Palin campaign was such a mess, often bordering on ineptitude. The republicans are almost always able to draw much more money than the democrats, including massive infusions from corporate PACs. What happened this time? The republicans have always had strong and effective national and local campaign organizations that won them five of the last seven presidential elections and the majority of the congressional and gubernatorial elections. What happened this time? Did the GOP just sit back on its laurels and get complacent?
I believe that to a large extent McCain was stabbed in the back by his own party. The republican 'king makers'
don't want a maverick. They don't want a "new blood" Washington outsider for vice president. And they particularly don't want a president who isn't a dogmatic Reaganite. So McCain was pretty much left to twist in the wind. His campaign was ill advised. Tactics were tried helter-skelter and quickly abandoned, making McCain look desperate, as though he himself thought that he was a loser. Of course, having a sitting president that is deservedly so unpopular that he dared not campaign for McCain was no help. But, if McCain loses, I think he will have lost because the GOP party insiders had no interest in his winning.
Any thoughts?
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