Expect McCain Camp To Go Increasingly Negative After Tonight's Debate
John McCain is going back on his pledge. Last April, speaking to his old high school in Alexandria, Virginia, McCain pledged to run a "respectful campaign," against his Democratic opponent. McCain went even further in denouncing the outside political groups that run negative ads, the so-called 527 organizations like the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth who torpedoed John Kerry's 2004 campaign, describing them as "poison[ing] the political atmosphere." McCain has repeatedly said on the trail that, "Americans want more respectful campaigns." Cindy McCain reaffirmed this respectful campaign pledge a month later in an interview with CBS Today Show's Ann Curry, proclaiming, "None of this negative stuff, though. You won't see it come out of our side at all. My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all." Oh, how the times they are a changing!
Fast forward six months from McCain's pledge to run a "respectful campaign." The economy teeters precipitously on the edge of complete meltdown. Even with the House approving the Senate's economic bailout plan late last week, the DOW Jones - a market indicator that measures the performance of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States - was down as much as 800 points Monday, closing at under 10,000 for the first time in four years. Last Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy lost 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest monthly drop since March 2003. Since January 1, 2008, the economy has lost over 760,000 jobs. Finally, today, the Congressional Budget Office reported that, "Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months," during this financial crisis. No wonder a new CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted over the weekend showed that nearly 60% of Americans think a depression is likely.
Not surprisingly, the overwhelming top concern of the American voter headed into this election is our struggling economy. And with Obama widening his lead in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, and well, everywhere, the McCain camp is desperate to get the discussion off the economy and into the mud. Expect the McCain camp to go increasingly negative during and after the second Presidential debate tonight in Nashville, Tennessee. We were given a taste this weekend, and yesterday, when Gov. Sarah Palin attacked Sen. Barack Obama's relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." Down late in the fourth quarter and without a single issue to run on, particularly without a plan to revive our economy other than the same failed George Bush policies, McCain-Palin is resorting to the same character assassination and baseless accusuations of past GOP campaigns in hopes of scaring the electorate in the weeks leading up to the election.
This reeks of the divisive and destructive Rovian politics that has torn our country at the seams the last eight years. In fact, in his latest Newsweek column, Karl Rove - often credited for being Bush's brain and engineering his electoral victories - instructed McCain-Palin that they "must deepen those doubts by pounding away on questions about Obama's character, judgment and values." Conservative columnist William Kristol agreed, proding Palin in his Monday column to bring up the "Wright Stuff." Again, this really isn't a surprise, after all, it was McCain's own campaign manager, Rick Davis, who declared last month that, "This election is not about issues." That's right. Davis, in an interview with the editorial board for the Washington Post "insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues," according to the Post. That's reassuring - the answer to our economic crisis, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, our faltering health care system, and the myraid of other serious issues facing our country are the candidates "personalities."
Tonight, the McCain camp will ratchet up on the attacks Palin started. Watch for this in the debate. Expect his post debate spinsters to accuse Obama of everything from "palling around with terrorists" and his bombastic minister, to being responsible for 9/11 and engineering the L.A. Dodgers first round sweep of the Chicago Cubs this weekend. Let the pit bull with lipstick bark all she wants, she has no bite as we saw in the last Thursday's Vice Presidential debate. McCain knows this election isn’t about him and the voters won’t side with him on the issues. His only hope to victory is impugning and damaging Obama’s character to the point where Americans feel there is simply too much to risk by voting for Obama. It’s going to be a full bore, all-out character assault with Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin damning the torpedoes, letting the artillery fly, and carpet bombing Obama until he’s only a shell of his former self.
The bottom line: if this election is about the economy, or the issues, McCain is toast. Game over. Democrats take the White House, have a realistic shot at hitting a filibuster proof 60 Senate seats, and expand their lead in the House. McCain's last resort is to throw the mud and hope it sticks. Obama's challenge tonight in the debate will be remaining, as he has largely thus far, above the fray. Getting into a mud fight with McCain could turn Obama's solid leads a month out into political quicksand. One month out, one thing is for certain, already at a fever pitch, this campaign is going to get real nasty starting this week.
Posted by: Josh Swanson on 10/07/2008 at 1:10 PM | Comments (8) | Permalink
Stop Looking At Your Watch! Both Candidates Look To Have, Or Avoid, Famous Debate Moment
The dust has settled and John McCain, fresh from his political foray into the budget crisis in Washington - where he did nothing but muddy the waters of the delicate negotiations - has decided to participate in tonight's debate at the University of Mississippi. First question of the debate, can McCain walk and chew gum at the same time? Second question of the debate, what did McCain do in Washington? Third question of the debate, will McCain suspend the debate to watch Matlock? All joking aside, tonight's debate is a watershed moment in a campaign thus far chalked with more hairpin twists and turns than a John Grisham novel that could either propel McCain back into the game - or - give Barack Obama the breakaway moment he's been looking for since this summer.
While tonight's debate was originally to focus on foreign policy, both sides have been informed that there will be questions addressing the current economic meltdown and Congressional bailout package of Wall Street. The market implosion reached a fever pitch this week as the $700 billion bailout package made its way through the treacherous waters of Washington politics. The circus and doom has voters sharply focused on the economy. As we'll undoubtedly be reminded tonight by the experts breaking down the debate, "It's The Economy, Stupid." This, of course, is the famous line from a sign James Carville posted in the Clinton campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas during the 1992 campaign.
While the dynamic of the campaign turned towards the economy from lipstick and silliness, McCain attempted to the deflect the focus on himself by suspending his campaign and heading to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. The result was McCain disrupting the delicate negotiations by interjecting his presence in an area where he has zero credibility or expertise. "This is the presidential campaign of John McCain undermining what [Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson tells us is essential for the country," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services and one of the architect's of the plan. With no deal reached as of this writing, McCain finds himself waffling on his pledge not to debate until the crisis was resolved and on a plane for Mississippi.
The upheaval in the financial industry, accompanied by shrinking consumer confidence in our economy, drastically altered the presidential race and gave Obama the first clear lead since the general election campaign began. The latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll showed, "Just 9 percent ... rated the economy as good or excellent, the first time that number has been in single digits since the days just before the 1992 election. Just 14 percent said the country is heading in the right direction, equaling the record low on that question in polls dating back to 1973." Further, more voters trust Obama with the economy, giving him a 52 percent to 43 percent advantage over McCain when asked who is better able to handle the current economic problems.
Tonight, McCain somehow has to convince voters that, even given his history in favor of the deregulation that helped land us in this mess, he understands the economy and is not another cookie-cutter Bush Lite whose only prescription is to spend more and cut the taxes in the top marginal rate. Not only that, but McCain has to convince voters he understands what we are going through and can relate to our economic problems. This task may not be easy considering he must overcome not knowing how many houses he owns, his statement that the economy is "still fundamentally strong," in the wake of the collapses on Wall Street last week, that it takes $5 million to be considered rich, and that he has 13 cars parked in the garages of his seven, or eight, houses.
It's a tough sell, one that cost George H.W. Bush his reelection campaign in 1992 when he could not tell a voter at a town hall debate how the national debt had affected him personally. (See clip below) After struggling with the question, Bush stumbled, "Maybe I'm getting it wrong, are you suggesting if someone has means that the national debt doesn't effect them, I'm not sure I get it." He didn't get it. Bush rambled on in an answer about teenage pregnancy and interest rates before Bill Clinton jumped in and asked the voter with empathy, "Tell me how it has affected you again." Clinton then proceeded to connect with the voter on that personal level that became his trademark, explained how the debt affected his state, people he knew, and how he'd fix it. Bush looked on befuddled and confused, starring at his watch, knowing he had just probably lost the election to this country bumpkin from Arkansas.
With so much riding on tonight's debate, both candidates are looking to either have, or avoid, such famous debate moments where the tidal wave of this election could turn for or against them in one sweeping moment. While they don't occur at every debate, we'll all be tuned in watching attentively waiting for someone to either deliver like Clinton or falter like Bush. Or, deliver like Bentsen and flounder like Quayle. Each candidate has probably seen these clips hundreds of times and been forewarned to either avoid stumbling into such a moment, or to capitalize on the moment if it presents itself. With that, is anyone else getting incredibly excited for tonight?!
GREAT DEBATE MOMENTS
1988 Presidential Debate. While Lloyd Bentsen may have shined in his moment, Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis bombed in an exchange that propelled George H.W. Bush to a landslide victory without Bush even saying a word. CNN's Bernard King asked Dukakis if he'd change his mind and support the death penalty if his wife Kitty were brutally raped.
1992 Presidential Town Hall Debate. Bill Clinton showed that trademark ability to connect with voters one-on-one, causing a flummoxed George H.W. Bush to reel from an exchange that had Bush impatiently looking at his watch as the time on his presidency ticked to an end.
1988 Vice Presidential Debate. Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, a seasoned and experienced Senator from Texas was debating his young Senate colleague from Indiana, Dan Quayle. Quayle walked chin first into one of the most crushing blows in debate history when he tried to compare himself to another one-time young Senator, former President John F. Kennedy. Bentsen pounced in what is arguably the most famous exchange in debate history.
Before the 1980 election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan turned into a blowout, things were tight headed into the final weeks. That is, until Reagan delivered four of the most famous words in debate history that painted a damning picture of Carter that he could not escape from.Posted by: Josh Swanson on 9/26/2008 at 2:05 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
McCain Championed Gordon Gekko Economics
Since his arrival in Washington nearly thirty years ago, John McCain has advocated for a Gordon Gekko economic plan. The plan is easily summed up in three words: "Greed Is Good." This phrase is easily recognizable as one of the most famous lines in movie history, coming from the 1987 hit "Wall Street." The film introduced the world to Gordon Gekko, an unscrupulous corporate villain played by Michael Douglas. Gekko symbolized the greed and excess of driving fast and reckless to the bottom line for the top dollar, regardless the legality or how many people were destroyed. And it was Gekko who told a group of shareholders and brokers in the film that, "Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good."
McCain was listening. Upon entering the Senate in the same year we were introduced to Gekko, McCain embraced Gekko economics as the model for operating our economy and conducting business on Main Street and Wall Street. The economics of those who are threatening to bankrupt our economy courtesy the bailouts they've engendered because of their reckless actions has been heaping doses of deregulation, deregulation, and deregulation. Deregulation that McCain supported in vote, after vote, after vote since his election to the Senate. In fact, last October, not even one year ago, McCain wrote in an op-ed to "Contingencies" magazine that:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
Only months removed from that statement, McCain is traveling across the country, decrying the abuses of Wall Street, threatening big action and reform if elected, and telling crowds he's been a corporate reformer for years. Strange for a man who effectively praised financial deregulation less than one year ago. Why then did McCain describe regulation, the very sort of regulation he purports to support today, as a burden on our health care system - "the worst excesses of state-based regulation," only months ago?
Better question, why did McCain vote in 1999 to deregulate the mortgage industry? That's right, McCain voted to abolish the regulations he now claims to support - the deregulation that helped plunge us into this mess. In 1999, the 106th Congress voted on Senate Bill 900 (S. 900), a bill that provided for the deregulation of the mortgage and the financial services industry. The bill is more commonly known as the Gramm Act, named after the sponsor of the bill, McCain's senior economic advisor, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). McCain supported the bill along with every other Senate Republican. The vote was a party-line vote with the exception of Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC). All 44 Senate Democrats except Hollings voted against the bill. All 54 Republican Senators, including McCain, voted for it.
Talk about your all time flip flops for political expediency. Don't buy it. McCain supported the Gramm Act and made its chief architect his chief economic advisor. Clearly, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. McCain believes in Gordon Gekko economics, that "Greed Is Good." In essence, for years McCain actively supported taking away the referees courtesy deregulation as the best way to ruin, err, I mean run, our economy. Now that the blow back from the deregulation is costing taxpayers millions in bailouts, and sinking him in the polls, McCain is suddenly for regulation? If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you in Alaska.
Fittingly, with a twist of irony, it appears that McCain's presidential
hopes may collapse like the venerable Wall Street finance giants that have went under for the
same reason - the deregulation McCain voted for since arriving in
Washington. The American taxpayer will be forced to stomach a $700 billion dollar bailout for a crumbling Wall Street this week. Unfortunately for McCain, he's unlikely to get the same sort of bailout from the taxpayers who cast their votes is a few months. Luckily for McCain, his 8 houses and 13 cars should help him ease the pain.
Posted by: Josh Swanson on 9/22/2008 at 10:20 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
McCain Couldn't Spell Economy If Spotted Six Letters: Proclaims Economy Strong In Face Of Financial Earthquake
This weekend a financial earthquake shook our markets unlike any other since Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929, the market crash that plunged our country into the Great Depression. With the aftershocks still reverberating around Wall Street and Main Street's across America, economists and financial experts scrambled to figure out what to do next. But John McCain, aware of the situation but perhaps refreshed after a weekend at one of his eight houses, was fast out of the gate in proclaiming his stunning disconnect, ignorance, and overall failure to grasp the magnitude of the weekend's events.
At a campaign rally in Florida, McCain, maybe not so surprisingly given his self-confessed ignorance on economic matters, proclaimed, "Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Let me repeat that, it Bear Stearns repeating. Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old Wall Street giant, had collapsed and Merrill Lynch was bought out by Bank of America, barely staving off the same fate that met Lehman Brothers. As a result stocks plummeted across the board with the Dow suffering its largest single day drop since the the markets opened after 9/11, falling 500 points. According to experts, the situation is dire. "You have to throw out the history books because there's really nothing to compare this to," said Jim Dunigan, chief investment officer at PNC Advisors.
And the response from John McCain, the man who wants to be the country's economist-in-chief who declared as recently as last year that, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should," which was preceeded by his confession that, "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated," well, his response is simply mind numbing. According to McCain, our economy is still fundamentally strong? Is McCain serious, or was this one of his spry jokes, like, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?" Did John McCain slip into a moment of senility this morning or is he simply that disconnected from the reality of what's happening to our economy.
In an interview with CNNMoney.com, Art Hogan, the chief market strategist for Jefferies & Co., said this was unprecedented, that the magnitude of the financial industry fallout could only be compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s or the railroad bankruptcies of the 1800s. "We've never witnessed this before," said Hogan. "There's no road map for this." What in the name of everything holy, what in the name of Calvin Coolidge is fundamentally strong about our economy, Senator McCain? It appears that John McCain knows as much about the economy as his counterpart, Sarah Palin, knows about the Bush Doctrine. That is, alarmingly zero to none. After Palin's debacle with Charlie Gibson, she may have dodged a bridge to nowhere as McCain-Palin now have a bigger moose to fry after McCain's shuttering response to the state of our economy.
With an economy flirting with life support and total collapse, McCain's diagnosis is nothing short of malpractice. We cannot afford to hand the reigns of the economist-in-chief, the office that sets the budget priorities for our country, to a man who couldn't spell E-C-O-N-O-M-Y if spotted six of the seven letters.
The economy is fundamentally strong? Our nation's unemployment rate skyrocketed to a five-year high of 6.1% in August as employers cut 84,000 jobs. There were 9.4 million Americans unemployed in August, an increase from 7.1 million a year ago. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over 240,000 jobs have been lost since the beginning of 2008. The housing market has burst. 1.5 million homeowners entered the foreclosure process last year, and 2.5 million more are predicted to enter foreclosure this year in lieu of the recent credit crunch. Nearly 10% of Americans are behind on the mortgage payments. Main Street is surely flexing its economic muscles.
The economy is fundamentally strong? Today, 5.7 million more people live in poverty than in 2000. The number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 7.2 million since 2000 - meaning nearly 50 million Americans are without basic health insurance. Health care costs have risen four times faster than wages over the past six years and the personal savings rate is now the lowest it's been since the Great Depression. In addition to Lehman Brothers collapse; Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac and Fannie May were all bailed out by the government. AIG teeters precipitously on the edge and Merrill Lynch staved off the same thanks to Bank of America. Wall Street is surely flexing its economic muscles.
The economy is fundamentally strong? Wages have remained stagnant as the median average income for a middle class family has dropped nearly $2,000 under President Bush, the first time the median average income has fallen at such a rate in our history. Meanwhile, the cost of basic necessities skyrocketed as the cost of in-state college tuition has increased 35% over the last five years; gas prices have increased nearly 150% from $1.46 per gallon when Bush took office in January 2001 to over $4.00 this summer. American consumers are surely flexing our economic muscles.
John McCain thinks, despite all of this, that our economy is fundamentally strong, that it takes $5 million dollars to be rich and cannot remember how many houses he owns without referring to his staff. With so much riding on this election, we cannot afford to give McCain another house, this one on Pennsylvania Avenue. We cannot afford to hand the reigns of our economy to a man who couldn't spell E-C-O-N-O-M-Y if spotted six of the seven letters.
Posted by: Josh Swanson on 9/15/2008 at 5:20 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink
One House For Each Day of The Week: McCain Unsure How Many Houses He Owns
It's a simple enough question, "How many houses do you have?" It's so simple that most Americans do not have to think, hesitate, or refer to their staff for an answer. It's so simple, a caveman could do it, right? We own one cave at 323 Cobblestone Lane in Bedrock - although the Flintstone's are rumored to be considering the purchase of a vacation home with the Rubbles. Even Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, who was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world earlier this year, doesn't refer to his staff to tell you the number of houses he has. The answer, by the way, is one - located in the Dundee neighborhood in Omaha, a neighborhood filled with mostly college students.
When asked this morning, McCain, however, couldn't answer the question. On the heels of his remarks at the Saddleback Church last weekend that it takes $5 million dollars to be considered rich, how surprised should we be that when asked how many houses he owned, John McCain could not give a straight answer? Yet again, in another sign of how shockingly out-of-touch and disconnected he is with the economic crisis facing so many, when asked by the Politico's Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen how many houses he owns, McCain replied that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife Cindy owned. "I think I'll have my staff get to you," said McCain, in an interview in Las Cruses, New Mexico. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."
The answer, verified by tax and property records following the interview, is at least seven. John McCain owns seven homes. Of course, it must be easy for McCain to understand the problems of the 1.5 million homeowners who entered the foreclosure process last year, and the 2.5 million more that Wall Street economists predict will enter foreclosure this year in lieu of the recent credit crunch when he has a house for every day of the week, right? Maybe McCain's staff can track down those numbers and bring them to the Arizona Senator's attention. "If you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising you might think the economy is fundamentally strong," responded Barack Obama, when asked about McCain's comments.
And let's not forget the recent unemployment numbers - it must be easy for John McCain to relate to those Americans facing tough times when he's flying his private jet between one of his seven multi-million dollar estates. In July, the unemployment rate reached its highest level in more than four years at 5.7 percent. It marked the seventh consecutive month of job losses nationwide, totaling 463,000 jobs lost since January 2008. Now, include tuition costs that have increased faster than inflation, increasing more than 40 percent since 2003; wages that have stalled with the average median family income $1,273 lower now than when President Bush took office; coupled with gas prices that have skyrocketed to over $4.00 a gallon at times after averaging $1.43 in January 2001 -- and our economy if fundamentally strong, Mr. McCain? For who?
However, in light of these ominous signs for our struggling economy, McCain made like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, telling us all is well. It is concerning that McCain has been unable to see, or acknowledge, the 1,200 pound elephant that is our struggling economy in the middle of the living room. In the same interview with Politco.com, not only was he blissfully unaware of the number of houses he owned, he was also unaware of the problems facing our economy, telling the interviewers that, "[T]he fundamentals of our economy are strong." Yep, same old song and dance from McCain, who told Fox New's Neil Cavuto only a few months ago that the economic problems facing our country were, "I think psychologically - and a lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological." Let's go to the tape!
When you live in seven glass houses, you ought to be careful when deciding to tell America that our economic problems are "psychological." The Obama campaign was quick to respond to McCain's forgetfulness - or disconnect from the problems facing Main Street and Wall Street - releasing what could quickly become a watershed commercial during this election season.
John McCain thinks the economic issues facing our country are psychological, that it takes $5 million dollars to be rich and cannot remember how many houses he owns without referring to his staff. Unfortunately, the economic issues facing the vast majority of Americans are not just a figment of our imaginations as Mr. McCain seems to believe. With so much riding on this election, can we really afford to give McCain an eighth house, this one on Pennsylvania Avenue?
Posted by: Josh Swanson on 8/21/2008 at 7:15 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink