<p>Seriously, is he trying to help Obama win? </p>
<p>All day today the McCain camp has been trying to make the case that McCain was “right” on Iraq simply because he was right about the surge “working.” However, now this leaves vulnerable because now Obama will counter saying that he–Obama–was “right” on Iraq because he was against it from the beginning–which is a way more popular position.</p>
<p>Also, stirring anti-New York Times sentiment was a foolish thing to do. McCain’s op-ed did lack specifics and now his op-ed/strategy for “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan is going to be torn apart by the pundits/media tomorrow.</p>
<p>I am an Obama supporter, but I cannot help but feel bad for how poorly the McCain camp is opperating. McCain ought to fire whomever is in charge of his campaign.</p>
<p>Don’t forget challenging repeatedly Obama to visit Iraq 4 months before the election, instead of waiting until the final stretch when he would have had no time to do so. I don’t think McCain was expecting Obama to actually just go. Now for the next week all major networks and their anchors are going to be following Obama across the Middle East, Iraq, and Europe. Germany is going to be the most ridiculous cause there’s suppose to be some hundreds of thousands of people at his speech.</p>
<p>I’m no political operative, but I’d say that McCain strategy definitely backfired…</p>
<p>The pump ad is really sad–it’s the sort of thing McCain would have made fun of in the old days. I remember when Zell Miller made that vitriolic speech against Kerry at the GOP convention–McCain was on Jon Stewart’s show, and Stewart played a bit of the speech for McCain and asked what he thought of it. “I don’t know,” said McCain. “Maybe Kerry ran over his dog.” That was the McCain that I liked. I don’t like the Rovian version nearly as much.</p>
<p>Here’s another thing I don’t get – McCain had an absolutely disastrous interview with Meredith Vieira yesterday morning.</p>
<p>(overshadowed by his equally disastrous interview with Diane Sawyer, where he once again flunked geography).</p>
<p>But the part I really don’t get is the near the middle of the interview (at 3:22 min):</p>
<p>McCain: “And, by the way, we’d have been out last March if Senator Obama’s wish, what his original plan called for. Not 16 months from now, but last March.”</p>
<p>Apparently, McCain thinks it is a good thing that we are still bogged down in this war ? I wonder what the families of the 151 US soldiers who have died in Iraq since March would think about that statement? How is it a bad thing that if Obama’s plan had been followed, the war would be over already?</p>
<p>“Where does he get his news?” Hopefully not from sources who believe that the Japanese “dropped the bomb” on Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p>Reading a thread like this is amusing. Several people who hate McCain all whipping themselves into a frenzy over how ineffective McCain’s ads and campaign strategy have been. Earth to Obama loyalists - these ads are meant to influence an independent who has an open mind or to encourage a McCain supporter, not to sway a far-left liberal.</p>
<p>calmom, I happened to see the interview yesterday with Meredith Viera when it aired. I was amazed at the way McCain was responding (though I guess they never answer the questions!). He kept repeating the surge has worked and wouldn’t have if Obama had his way to get out sooner (or for that matter, not entering the war to begin with). He kept hammering about the surge working. The point was whether to enter the war at all (but too late on that now) and now the point is in how to get out and all he harped on was that the surge was good and not on any exit strategy of his own. I feel that Bush is ignoring what the citizens are saying and feeling and now McCain seems on that same track. McCain has not specified a plan to get out. The public wants us out. He keeps harping on past events and why they were good in his view.</p>
<p>I totally agree with you on this, and because I am against his policies in Iraq, a lot of his social policies, and am dismayed about his lack of economic sophistication (and, this is going to sound harsh, he’s just too old), I am just glad we aren’t seeing that McCain who is charming, funny, and likeable. I think we should choose a president on more than raw likeability, but I am aware that’s how a lot of people vote in this country.</p>
<p>I hadn’t heard about this supposed gaffe of Obama about the bomb that was dropped on Pearl Harbor. He gave a speech in which, in his prepared text, he refers to historical threats to America, including “the bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor.” In the audio version, he seems to say “bomb” instead of “bombs.” This is being touted on right-wing blogs that Obama doesn’t know the history of Pearl Harbor. Does anybody really think that Obama believes only one bomb fell on Pearl Harbor? Does anybody think that this is anything other than a misreading of his prepared text?</p>
<p>As liberals/progressives, I do not know how anyone here can suggest it would be wrong for us to do more drilling off our shores or on our land, but absolutely necessary for “developing countries” like Venezuela, Libya, Iran and Iraq to increase production.</p>
<p>How’s that work?
Progressively, I mean?</p>
<p>The ad above was mediocre, to be sure, and not in anyway unusual or unique. </p>
<p>This election is being defined, unlike any other, less by issues than something verging on a cult of personality; which is to say that this election is about Senator Obama and his larger than life story and personality.</p>
<p>If you are for Senator Obama: it is about Obama.</p>
<p>If you are for John McCain: it is about Obama.</p>
<p>The media --mainstream, right and left-- is covering Obama. Much, much less coverage of McCain: He’s dead boring to those interested in personality and character. People like me…and most of you.</p>
<p>In a turn of phrase:
It’s about Obama, stupid!</p>
<p>Expect more adds, profiles, puff-pieces and attacks on this fresh Senator from Illinois. It will be his path to victory …or defeat.</p>
<p>When it speaks the truth about the fact that the rationale for McCain’s campaign is disappearing through events (and now with the fact that Obama appeared totally presidential and said all the right things in his press conference in Jordan), yes.</p>
<p>Remember, McCain himself said he’s not up to speed on the economy. Beyond his claims to be ready to Commander in Chief and a foreign policy president, what else does he have? Not a lot.</p>
<p>Yes, it is about Obama and that’s McCain’s problem – its why he can’t even get his own op ed piece published in the New York times. He can’t articulate what he is about. He doesn’t have a plan for Iraq except to extol the virtues of the status quo – he has a nonsensical fiscal policy (promising to preserve the Bush tax cuts and at the same time eliminate federal deficits, using money saved from “winning” the war he objects to getting out of) – and he has an inconsistent and shifting message. He doesn’t even have a consistent line of attack against Obama. One day Obama is inexperienced, the next day Obama is so powerful and influential that he’s the one to blame for the current rise in oil prices.</p>
<p>McCain doesn’t stand a chance because he isn’t giving any of those “independents” a single good reason to vote for him. He sounds like a befuddled old man who has lost his mojo and is just going through the motions of a campaign.</p>
<p>I agree with Woodwork that this election is about Obama, whether one likes him or loathes him or worries about him. To some, he represents the promise of something different and to others, the risk of someone too different.</p>
<p>
[Marc</a> Ambinder](<a href=“http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/]Marc”>http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/)
Unlike Ambinder, I’m not suspecting this 86-year old woman of even a whiff of racism; she just does not feel comfortable with someone who has not been in the limelight for long and whose biography is so different from that of public figures to which she is accustomed. But it is just this lack of familiarity that draws the media to Obama.</p>
<p>MCain, unfortunately, has played Hillary to Obama since Obama clinched the nomination: criticzing rather than stating his own position and policies. And he has been undercut by events. It’s a good thing that the NYT asked him to rewrite his article. It gives him a chance to articulate what his plans are.</p>
<p>There are plenty of voters who think that if we can win this war in Iraq AND leave in the next couple of years that is a MUCH better outcome than if we had just given up and left last year with the country still in a mess. The reason Iraq is nearly of the screen as a major issue is because the surge worked and the war is being won. After all that has been expended, that’s better than the alternative.</p>
<p>Has anyone noticed that just the talk of getting more oil drilling started has lowered gas price about 5%? That’s a start. An orderly process to opening more good fields could bring the price down another 10-20% as the price fall below $100 again.</p>
<p>I definitely agree about two points made in this thread already.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>McCain is a far cry from the man and the campaign he ran in 2000 where he was an honorable man fighting for what he believed, not against what the his opponent believes. </p></li>
<li><p>Similar to 1, McCain is, in my opinion, making a huge mistake by making non-stop attacks against Obama and not advocating his own policies and plans at all. With issues like oil and especially Iraq, the general media is already covering all of the aspects of Obama’s side with a positive view (Maliki agreeing with Obama, for example). There’s no way McCain can get enough air time to counter that side; the only way he can hope to gain ground is to push forward positively with his own views.</p></li>
</ol>