Mar 13 2008
Stupid election spin
I was trying to go all week without commenting on the election, but it’s like a fungus that just keeps on growing. Anyways, Chris at Open Left has a good quickie today about the stupidest statements from the campaigns. The big three:
- Clinton’s “winning the big blue makes me electable” argument. Not only is the claim the winning primaries makes a candidate able to win general elections dubious, but the argument that winning big state primaries is especially retarded. I can’t remember California ever deciding a Presidential election (I wasn’t around in 1968). General election polling, financial resources, swing states, swing demographics and a proven ability to turn out new voters are all vastly superior means of determining general election “electability.”
- Obama’s “Republicans will compromise with me” line. Talk about not learning anything from the last fifteen years of politics. Democrats can never apply the same level of pressure against the vast majority of congressional Republicans as various conservative apparatuses can. The conservative base frequently primaries Republicans we can barely scratch touch in general elections, strips them of committee assignments over which we have no control, bashes them in conservative media where we don’t get a say, and dries up fundraising to which we were never contributing. We just can’t pressure most Republicans the way conservatives can. Even the specter of general election defeat does not compare with the pressure the conservative movement can leverage against congressional Republicans.
- McCain’s “talking about NAFTA will cause us to lose Afghanistan” bit. While there is a lot to choose from when it comes to McCain, that was one of the more garbled arguments I have ever seen a politician make.
Yeah, there’s a lot more than that. The Obama one has been my number one criticism from the get-go. It shows an incredible naivite, I really hope it’s just something to not scare away moderate voters, because he’s gonna get his ass handed to him if he really thinks that. Something else worth noting is that if the GOP loses as many seats as speculated, he might not even have to give them the time of day, at least the hardliners.
The biggest running joke for me is from the Democrats touting the ‘end of business as usual’ line. Sure, things are gonna be different, mostly for the better, but nobody seems to want to stop the milk from the corporate teat, or do anything really earth-shattering and drastic, which is what we really need to fix things right now. I’m not sure who has the most dumb things. McCain’s not in the spotlight as much, and Clinton seems to be saying something stupid that stretches the bounds of credulity just about every day now. What y’all think?
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