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Signs from a Sinking Ship
Permission is granted for Republicans to abandon McCain’s sinking ship.
Sometimes there are hints of trouble that become obvious only in retrospect. But sometimes there are sirens and waving red flags that make it clear trouble is not just impending, it’s already here. What you are hearing are those sirens.
The steady stream of negative attack ads coming from McCain Central leaves little doubt that the McCain folks are already desperate – and it’s not even August.
So much for having anything positive to say. So much for having answers to the country’s pressing problems. McCain’s strategy has already deteriorated in to widespread mud slinging, hoping something sticks. He is now questioning whether Obama is prepared to lead.
This from the man who didn’t even know that Czechoslovakia isn’t a country anymore; and even after having advisors explain that to him, once again spoke of the now non-existent nation.
The same man who had to have Senator Lieberman whisper in his ear the difference between Sunnis and Shiites during a trip to the Middle East.
Who’s prepared to lead? That doesn’t sound like a question McCain should be asking.
Compare the two candidates most recent foreign trips…
McCain had barely left U.S. soil before he demonstrated the huge gaps in his much-touted foreign policy credentials. Since then he has continued to stumble over even the most basic facts about world affairs and simple geography
But Obama? His trip has been criticized for being too successful.
At a time when world opinion of the US is at an all-time low thanks to the policies of Bush and McCain, Obama was embraced around the world. In Germany, a crowd of more than 200,000 turned out.
And the Republicans contend that was a bad thing.
That claim is one of those red flags.
Contending it’s bad for the U.S. when the people of other nations rally behind a U.S. leader and express hope that our nation can regain its moral standing in the world – that is spin that falls completely flat.
So Republicans, feel free to abandon ship. The USS McCain is taking on water.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Sunday, August 3, 2008
Permalink: Signs from a Sinking Ship - Comments 0
No Room for This Name on the Short List
When Senator Obama decided to ask Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to accompany him on his upcoming trip to Iraq, talk began that Hagel might be on Obama’s VP short list.
Each cycle there seems to be speculation that one of the candidates might break the rules and reach across the aisle for a bi-partisan ticket; there was such speculation in 2004 suggesting John Kerry would consider John McCain.
But this year, as Senator Obama shortens his list, Senator Hagel shouldn’t be on it.
If he wants to fuel media speculation, if he wants to encourage headlines that he’s considering a bi-partisan ticket, that’s one thing. But to actually consider Hagel would be a slap to the change coalition he’s put together.
Yes, Senator Hagel has foreign policy credentials, and yes, he’s been willing to buck his party on the Iraq war.
But here’s a few other things we need to remember about Senator Hagel:
He has a 100% National Right to Life and Christian Coalition rating.
He’s against expanding embryonic stem cell research.
He’s voted against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
He’s voted to keep tax subsidies for companies moving jobs off shore.
He’s voted against background checks for gun purchases at gun shows.
And he voted to confirm Justices Alito and Roberts.
If there is any speculation about Senator Hagel joining Obama on the ticket, it should go no further.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Monday, July 14, 2008
Permalink: No Room for This Name on the Short List - Comments 1
Trust Takes Time
Obama is moving to the right, like many before him.
Shading positions, shifting, parsing – all in an effort to expand a coalition that his campaign team now worries is insufficient to win the general election. And with this repositioning has come some grumbling from his base, raising questions whether he has sealed the deal with his base enough to be able to move toward the center without it splintering.
Undoubtedly, the base coalition will be confused by Obama talking of the need to move away from the policies of President Bush and the Senator, then embracing an expansion of faith-based programs and casting a vote in support of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a bill giving immunity to telecommunications companies for assisting the administration in warrantless wiretapping.
Reverend Jesse Jackson’s recent comments about Senator Obama, while incredibly foolish and certainly reflective of Jackson’s bruised ego for now being pushing from the spotlight, are also an indication that there is growing frustration within Obama’s base. Frustration that Obama would be wise to consider.
For a candidate new to the national scene, one of Obama’s major challenges is providing the nation an opportunity to know him. His relationship with voters is still in development, and it is this relationship, not just policy positions, that will determine whether he becomes the next President.
Implicit in that relationship is trust: trust that voters know who he is and understand what he believes.
Trust takes time. And while Senator Obama’s base is enthusiastic and motivated, it is also still developing a relationship with him. This general election repositioning is going to test that relationship.
As Obama’s team puts together its general election strategy, it would do well not to forget those who brought them this far.
There is always a tendency in politics to want to be all things to all people. But in a “change” election, people want a candidate who speaks truth to power, who shows the strength to go in a different direction.
And most importantly, a candidate who takes a position and keeps it.
Senator Obama is still building an incredible national coalition, one that can change our broken politics. But it will only succeed if he does not barter off too much of the good will he has developed in his efforts to grow that coalition.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Friday, July 11, 2008
Permalink: Trust Takes Time - Comments 0
Let me get this straight…
John McCain, Mitt Romney and Karl Rove are all on the campaign trail, on message, redefining McCain and pounding on Senator Obama.
And the Democrats?
Still trying to come together.
In a symbolic gesture, Senator Obama gave Senator Clinton a campaign contribution to help in the retirement of her more than $20 million dollar debt.
Debt, remember, that she incurred while undermining Obama.
Debt she incurred while attempting to turn working-class white voters against Obama.
Debt she incurred attacking Obama’s leadership qualifications.
Half of this debt is money she loaned her campaign when the writing was already on the wall. By then, she had no real path to the nomination, but still chose to continue loaning herself money and working to undermine our eventual nominee.
And now she wants Obama and his nationwide network to retire her debt to ensure her vigorous support of his campaign?
Did I miss McCain’s checks to Huckabee and Romney?
Did I miss the unity efforts the Republicans undertook to ensure that Huckabee and Romney voters would fall behind McCain?
At a time when the Republicans are working as a team, reading from the same page, the Democrats are losing time and wasting energy still trying to come together.
Still some Clinton voters say they’ll sit November out, or worse, vote for McCain – even though his first appointment to the Supreme Court would guarantee more decisions like the one handed down yesterday overturning nearly all of D.C.’s firearm restrictions. We’ll watch the nation roll backward on issues from choice to affirmative action – the very result many Clinton supporters have spent decades fighting to prevent.
And these are the same people that would be outraged if Obama had lost, and his supporters had threatened to sit out the general election.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Friday, June 27, 2008
Permalink: Let me get this straight… - Comments 0
Same Old Tired Thinking
If there’s anything we’ve learned about the 2008 presidential election cycle, it’s that this year it’s about Change.
So why is John McCain still peddling the same old tired thinking that has landed our country in this economic quagmire?
While Senator Obama and most of the nation is looking forward, Senator McCain is most definitely looking backward. His suggestion this week that states should be allowed to reconsider offshore oil drilling is the perfect example that McCain just doesn’t get it. The nation has moved beyond the “we can drill our way out of this situation” thinking.
All of us, except McCain and the oil companies that is.
At the time when we need leadership that will commit us to developing alternative energy sources, leadership that will invest in and jump start the next technological revolution, McCain has offered us proof that his administration would be just more of the same.
Under McCain, Big Oil lobbyists would still be writing national energy policy. No one else wants to open up offshore oil drilling where doing so would not benefit consumers or have any effect on world oil supply or prices. The only beneficiaries of offshore drilling are Big Oil CEOs.
Sound familiar? Yes, the same folks who brought us $4 a gallon gasoline. The same people who have been running the store the past seven years under President Bush,
And McCain doesn’t see any need for change. He’d rather drill than invest. He’d rather listen to the oil companies than to us.
In 2008, when voters come to the fork in the road, they can choose to take a new path with Obama or continue down the same one with McCain.
With more pronouncements like this one, McCain is going to be on a lonely path.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Permalink: Same Old Tired Thinking - Comments 4
Too Many Burned Bridges
Senator Hillary Clinton has run a good campaign, one that in many election years would have secured her the Democratic nomination.
But not this year.
The problem is that from the beginning she thought the nomination was hers. She assumed it would be handed to her, a gift, and that there would be a coronation.
But the voters had something different to say. And now she can’t accept the fact that the country has chosen someone else.
This election has long since stopped being about what is best for the country, what is best the Democratic Party. For Hillary Clinton, it is now only about what is best for her.
And apparently, she can’t even figure that out.
When Senator Ted Kennedy’s run for the Presidency came up short, he returned to the Senate without burning bridges, without looking to wound the party or the nominee, and rededicated himself to becoming a Senator and a statesman. And in this role, he has made an enormous difference in lives of every American.
At this same fork, Hillary Clinton has so far decided not to show what kind of leader she could be, but rather to put on blinders and burn bridges.
When she says she leads in the popular vote, it requires such a tortured way of looking at the facts that it calls into question her honesty.
To arrive at this hollow conclusion, she counts votes from Michigan, where Senator Obama wasn’t even on the ballot; she estimates numbers for caucus states like Iowa, Nevada and Maine, where there were no official popular vote totals; and she includes Florida where both candidates pledged not to campaign.
This is the same twisting and distorting of facts for personal gain that has driven the national desire for change.
And Hillary Clinton has now become an example of what she has attempted to campaign against: the same old politics.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Monday, June 2, 2008
Permalink: Too Many Burned Bridges - Comments 0
The Job Interview
The latest from the Hillary Clinton camp is that the Democratic nomination contest between Obama and Clinton should been seen as a job interview.
Not that most voters weren’t already looking at it that way, casting their votes for the candidate they believed was best prepared to lead the country. But for the sake of argument, if voters hadn’t been approaching this as a job interview, and they had a chance to do so now, would the results be any different?
Probably.
Obama would already have secured the nomination.
What the Clinton campaign seems to be forgetting is one of the national electorate’s primary concerns is turning around our slumping economy: getting control of run-away spending, slicing deficits, investing in education and job-producing technological areas.
If the voters were to look at the Clinton campaign as an example of what her national economic policies would be like, what would it tell them?
That her economic policies would look an awful lot like those of George W. Bush.
Her campaign is more than $20 million in debt and surviving on borrowed money.
Sound familiar? That’s the same failed approach that has undermined the US economy.
On the other hand, the Obama campaign is running a surplus, engaging record numbers of contributors, uniting hundreds of thousands of low-dollar donors in his effort. That’s an economic model that works.
I’m not so sure that recasting this nomination process as a job interview is something the Clinton campaign really wants to do. If American voters look at how these campaigns are being run, the candidate they are going to hire is Barack Obama.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Permalink: The Job Interview - Comments 0
Love of Country or Ambition?
Hillary Clinton must choose.
Which is more important to her? Her love of country she so often cites on the campaign trail or her personal ambition?
Following the results in North Carolina and Indiana, Clinton’s campaign no longer has even a tortured path to the nomination.
She continues to lose in pledged delegates.
She continues to lose in the popular vote.
And with no path to the nomination, the time has come for her to choose country over ambition, end her campaign, and begin the party healing process necessary if Senator Obama is to win the general election.
This is the moment when her love of country is tested.
If she makes the right decision, it will be one we all remember, and it will cast her the end of her campaign in a positive light.
But if she makes the wrong decision and drags this out; if she chooses personal ambition as her personal guide, then the Hillary Clinton we remember will be much different.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Permalink: Love of Country or Ambition? - Comments 4
And the winner of the Democratic Presidential Primary…John McCain
Perhaps it was inevitable.
Campaigns that focused on the issues, that discussed policy, were bound to disintegrate into personal, negative attacks once the stakes were raised.
But remember how energizing it was for Democrats in January? Turnout numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire were shattering records. Activists were enthused by the entire field of candidates, boasting that any of the top tier would provide contrast to the failed Bush years and would win in November.
Now, we’re down to two and the hopes of moving forward unified have been shattered. There’s no more talk of “whoever becomes the nominee is fine, we’ll come together in November.” Now, there are legitimate concerns whether the recent tone and tenor of these campaigns are solidifying their supporters at the expense of future party unity.
As we saw in Pennsylvania, Republican nominee John McCain has been the winner in the recent Democratic primaries – and that might be the case in Indiana and North Carolina as well.
McCain has been able to take his road show to areas where his support his weak, staying above and outside the Democratic fray and simply reaping the benefits. Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama drive up each other’s negatives, weaken each other within the party base, and soften their support among independents.
And McCain sits on the sideline watching Christmas come early.
It is time for Democrats to start focusing on the general election, a general election that seemed much more like a sure thing five months ago than it seems now. A general election that will seem even less of a sure thing if this nomination fight continues into June.
This started off being the year of change.
Somewhere along the way, change got lost.
Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns now seem like every other campaign we’ve ever seen.
And all the while, the winner of each Democratic Primary continues to be John McCain.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Monday, May 5, 2008
Permalink: And the winner of the Democratic Presidential Primary…John McCain - Comments 0
What happened?
Remember when the White House seemed on a silver platter for the Democrats’ taking?
Six years into an unpopular war with no end in sight.
A mortgage and credit crisis spiraling the nation’s economy downward.
A Republican president with a bottom-of-the-barrel approval rating.
Record-shattering Democratic turnout in the early primaries and caucuses.
And a field of Democratic candidates offering change and excitement.
By all indications, it was a tailor-made Democratic year. There seemed to be no question whether the Democrats could take back the White House, merely which candidate from the talented field would be taking the oath.
So what happened?
When the Democratic contest narrowed to just two, the direction and tone of the race changed. It became more about who (Obama or Clinton) than what (change and moving the nation forward). Both campaigns diverted their focus from the voters to the candidates.
And what we have now is two campaigns, two candidates, gripping one another by the collar, willing combatants pulling each other downward. These once forward-looking campaigns that talked of bringing people together and unifying the nation now can’t see even a day ahead.
Their steely focus is now limited to how they one up each other, day by day.
These candidates attracted voters with their vision, with their promises to change politics, prompting the disillusioned to again believe and participate. These candidates talked about altering the power dynamics in Washington and about bringing real solutions.
These same two candidates are now living news cycle to news cycle. Their promise is diminishing. The newly energized and engaged are now questioning whether this is real change or just more of the same.
And all the while, Republican presidential nominee John McCain rises, not by merit but by default.
President Bill Clinton used to say if politicians were talking about themselves instead of about the people, then they had it wrong. If that’s true, right now Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have it wrong.
Practicing the politics of personal destruction no longer distinguishes one candidate from the other; it makes all politicians look alike.
But if one of them actually decides to practice what they’ve been preaching?
That person might just be the next President.
Posted by Bernie Campbell on Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Permalink: What happened? - Comments 0
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