All of A Sudden The Hot Button Issues Have Vanished
Interesting.
Now that the financial markets have collapsed in a near-death dance, those well known issues that appeal to the raw nerves of voters have gone quietly in the night.
Abortion, choice, guns, gun control, stem cell research, intelligent design, educational challenges, sex education, national service, censorship or freedom, and of course, the one issue that always makes the top of the love-it-or-leave it list – gay relationships.
So the ideology-motivated activists in both parties are faced with the reality that people, facing fear and anxiety in a troubled economic climate, are more interested in solution, than petty attacks, some of them bordering on ethnic sensitivities.
With the Presidential race a little more than three weeks away, the McCain campaign has a challenge. Stuck in reverse, McCain is desperately trying to make Obama the issue. Obama, so far, is counter attacking, but mostly with positive spots and themes. Although Obama is not beyond digging up McCain’s past, including the Keating Five Bank Scandal.
This reporter has learned a few things in my observation of politics. Pressing fear as a strategy only works if there is really something to worry about. In the long run, people want to hear about solutions, not personal attacks. Negative campaigning works, but usually when it is issue-related.
John McCain is too smart to allow the fear mongers to take over his campaign. And Barack Obama is too smart to allow those tactics to get him to lose his cool.
How would you run both campaigns at this point?
Comments(31)
Larry, I would run it exactly as Obama is running his. McCain is clearly desperate and has gone bizarly negative to try to trade on fears of swing voters in those few key states. It has backfired, big time, but good in the sense that McCain exposed hiself as not having a grasp of the current problems. Had Obama offered the $300 billion motgage buy back program, the right would be screaming socialism, which would be correct. It’s over for McCain and when guys like me are going to vote Obama, it says he might even get something close to a landslide.
Gay relationships are at the top of the list ?
Larry, thank you for changing blog topic.
With 4 weeks left and daily slippage in polls, McCain needs a Hail Mary pass. Unless he has a bomb to drop on Obama, I think he really doesn’t have a strategic option left. 2 months ago I was saying he should make Mitt Romney his VP choice and announce him as his Economy Czar. Instead he picks a token, obscure woman as his VP and continues to display ignorance on the economy. With each sound byte he sounds more like the cranky old man that is out of touch that Obama has painted him as. He is either pigheaded or received bad advice or both.
Obama doesn’t need to do anything but stay the course and remain vanilla. All he can do is blow it by making statements or appearing too controversial.
YFAP, welcome back from Continental Hotel.
George, 15% margin which will represent a landslide, mandate victory.
Then we have to deal with a weak President being run over by Congress. Think Jimmy Carter. Nancy Pelosi might as well get elected President.
OOOJ-Right on the money with the Romney scenario.I too thought Romney was the choice & in retrospect,should’ve been.
McCain lost it when he went wandering all over the stage at the town hall debate. Bizarre. He has made his personal frustration with Obama a liability by wearing it on his sleeve.
For McCain, I would rein in Palin and apologize to the American people for her rabble-rousing speeches and failure to “correct” people in her audiences who have yelled “Kill Obama” and racial epithets. Her failure to tell people that’s just not appropriate is a sign that she is either 1) a hate monger or 2) clueless about how to come across as a responsible and civil person. I’d get Palin off the ticket — maybe with a cover of a “pregnancy complication” for Bristol or other family issue that she decides she must deal with. I’d get a responsible Republican on the ticket. Forget Romney — he’s not sincere. They need someone with real credibility, but it would have to be a person who does not scare the social conservatives. Maybe one of the female Republican senators. Then go easy on the attacks, offer specific proposals to solve problems other than massive tax cuts, and cross fingers. Blame it on the campaign team; have McCain buy a half an hour of prime time to apologize for his campaign team’s negative tactics and to offer his proposals. That might rehabilitate him a bit.
Obama’s campaign is running pretty well. I’d continue the overall positive tone and the positive ads. Not much that needs changing.
I would urge McCain to become more aggressive. With a hate mob on his side, he might be able to seize control of the government even if he does not win the vote.
I would tell Obama to go back in time in his time machine and avoid bad people.
Hello Larry,it looks like a landslide win for obama in nov.,unless McCain/Palin pull the greatest upset in history this race is over,and even if McCain/Palin did win would the bias media report it?would the bias newspapers have it on the front page?would you change your blog any faster?
Larry as you know I really don’t have a horse in this race,and the mudslinging from both sides McCain and Palin also from Obama and his surrogates,angry bloggers and the bias media’s way campagning for obama for the last two years is a real turn off to the american people,the american people want to know the truth but have no place to get it from,I will see you on nov 5th.
Palin is unethical. McCain showed poor judgment choosing a VP candidate who was under bipartisan investigation for unethical abuses of power. Put a bow on her: she was the biggest gift the GOP gave to Obama this year.
Suddenly and remarkably, I agree with all comments by both JR and Leo.
Watching John McCain be a punching bag for Media and Dems is like watching 45 year old Rocky take a beating without the storybook ending.
Also, JR and I are not happy with this outcome. Leo is. I suspect that that nirrors the country. Only about a third of the country will be happy with the outcome and one wonders how the majority could be disappointed.
Pretty soon everyone will be disappointed, including Barrack’s wing man, Leo.
The way we manufacture celebrities and heroes in this country scares me. Toss a young girl on the Mickey Mouse Club Show and the next thing you know she is the biggest star in America. Britney Spears ended up being a train wreck for quite a while. I am afraid the Democrats and the media are doing the same thing with Obama. The man has done nothing, yet he has written two autobiographies. He’s being promoted through the media as a superstar yet he has not been proven to be super nor a star (unless you count reading telepromters and repeating political lines rehearsed out the wazoo). What ever happened to the days when a person had to earn their way to the top? Pay their dues, accomplish something, not just make promises and come up with campaign slogans. Go fight a war or build a successful business or run a state or have a resume longer than 143 days in Congress, then come back and see me.
I’m willing to take a shot at inexperience and empty rhetoric. The eight years of Bush has run the country into the ground. He has left us financially bankrupt, on the brink of depression and in the midst of two mismanaged wars. Conditions could not be worse and it all happened on his watch. I’m ashamed to admit I voted for Bush twice, but it’s time republicans get about themselves, admit he was a failure of epic proportions and try something new. Republicans missed the boat by not nominating Romney, so lets not exacerbate that mistake by electing McCain. McCain is a gambler, pigheaded, and clueless on economic issues. He’s a my way or the highway type of personality. He got into the navel academy based on legacy and finished at the bottomn of his class, proving he was essentially an affirmative action admitance. When you finish at the bottom of your class it proves you are:
1) not very smart
2) a party boy
3) have attention deficit disorder
4) all of the above
The correct answer is #4, and such a person should not become president of the united states. I’m filling out my absentee ballot today for Barrack Obama, then I’m going to pray it was the right decision. It’s Chocolate Time!
Larry, if you really believe what you just wrote about McCain, you are damn fool. Where have you been for the past month? Maybe if you got off your butt and tried writing here more often, you would see that Mccain has let his staff sink his campaign to disgusting lows from which it will NEVER recover. Wake up Larry, you used to be much better than this.
If Leo were my wing man I’d declare an emergency and request an immediate RTB.
Why are we having an election day on Nov 4?It makes no sense to spend all this money to have an election when the media/press has already spoken and chosen their winner.The people have not spoken and I thought this was a government of the people,guess what I learned in school many years ago is wrong.If I were running these campaigns I would demand truth from each party,I would council all the pollesters to tell the truth which they don’t.America is a sick society and soon we will be a socalist or marixist society.
I’m amazed that anyone believes the media has proclaimed Obama the winner. McCain has acted erratically in recent weeks, and he’s dooming himself. He’s tried time and again to manipulate the media, but his campaign team has done so in such a hamfisted manner that everyone sees right through it.
Look at how he wanders around during the last debate while Obama is speaking. What’s up with that? And listen to him speak nonesense, such as saying he’s going to implement a program in which the federal government will pay the full amount of egregious mortgage loans to subprime lending banks, rewarding them, while simultaneously claiming he’ll have massive tax cuts and an “across the board spending freeze.” You can’t have both. He is not articulating any sound policy, and that’s why Obama is rolling over him.
McCain has jumped the shark, its over for him. Lets come together and try to solve this economic crisis. No one living today will feel how bad this might end up, it could be worse than the Great Depression in that the excesses have been far worse, the global inter-connectedness has never been greater, and the average American has never sacrificed before. Its going to hurt in ways American are not use to. In the imortal words of Rodney King, “why can’t we all just get along!” Now that I’ve voted for a black president I’m going to be citing warm chestnuts like that from famous and infamous black Americans. In fact warm chestnut even has a racial overtone, in that BARRACK is chestnut in color.
By the way Leo, Fox has a new show called Choclate comedy with a former In Living Color comedian. Innovators like me know where the country’s sensibilty is with respect to how we describe people of color. Juan Willams is a great Chocolate politcal commetator who I really admire. A new idea I have for Fox is a show about gay black men called “Queer as Chocolate” coming fall 2009!
Larry, at the place I use to get free air they started charging $.75. So as not to give them the satisfaction, when they refused to turn on the machine, I said, like Sarah Palin, thanks but no thanks, you can keep all the stuff you just rang up for me, I’m going to WaWa for Free Air. The Asian couple gave me a really angry look, but I thought to myself this is a necessary stand and something I have to do in honor of Larry Kane!
“Chocolate Queers” might also be a good name for the show. I’m still developing the script and name for the show, but its going to be a hit, and will really help diveristy in a post-racial politically correct America. I predict that by Obama’s second tern the N-word will be defanged and will be used universally as a term of endearment or joking derision, and may even appear in the title of a maintream TV show or Movie, and that will ironically indicate that we’ve finally healed the racial chasim in America. Thanks for the free speech Larry, racial healing begins one blog entry at a time!
George, you’re right to bring this back to fundamentals. FREE AIR is going to be even more meaningful during the Late Depression. We need to rally around Larry and support his policy proposals. If we don’t, I fear that there won’t be much of a country worth saving.
p.s. I just hope no one accuses me of hanging around with AIR-ORISTS. This is class warfare. We need to stop the AIR-ISTOCRATS.
Leo give it a break. We all know how you feel about McCain. To continually harp on the subject just makes me want to vote for ABO (anybody but Obama). I’m not saying that George’s posts make it any easier for me to pull the lever for the upstart from Hawaii Kenya Chicago or where ever he’s from. I don’t know Obama. Unless he actually made a vote for or against the war in Iraq who cares what he says now in twenty twenty hindsight. He wasn’t there at the time. I do know he was against the surge and then he wanted to announce a time table for withdrawal from Iraq. What laws he introduced in the Senate, I don’t know. The man is a mystery wrapped in a slogan, embraced by the media.
Ed, I’m sure that McCain’s campaign team would be delighted to hear that its hamfisted handling of media relations, etc., is encouraging you to vote for “anyone but Obama.” Now if they can only find another 75,000,000 or so voters like you, they’ve got it in the bag!
Just made a homemade yard sign for Obama. Took my Bush Chaney sign from 2004, turned it inside out and painted OBAMA on it, I thought it was an apt metaphor and an honest way to convey to my friends and neighbors that I have been wrong, and now at least admit my mistake. An official Omaba sign would have been disingenous given my opinions and statemnets to them. I hope to God it is the right thing, our county is in serious trouble and current affairs make 9/11 look like a minor event.
I just drove by George’s house. He had his hand made Obama sign right next to a statuette of a lawn jockey. The slogan on his sign stated “yes we can” ‘change we can believe in” “change we need”.
Below that were the words “somebody change my depends”
Ed, your row house Philadelphia neighbors must be be proud that their retarded neighbor can type on the internet.
George, at least when I knock on my neighbors’doors they don’t put up a sign saying “will be back in five minutes”. Then never return……
Guy, put aside your personal differences. There are bigger problems facing us. Don’t forget what this blog is really about: FREE AIR. I’m upset that it wasn’t included in the $700 billion bailout package. I’m writing to Snarlin’ Arlen, hoping that he’ll try to tack it on to the next stimulus package that the Dems are working on. I’m also writing to Sestak, hoping he can get it in the House bill. Do your part and step up. The proposal is simple:
1) Federal government pays retail price for all gas station air compressors from coast to coast and in AK and HI. This should cost no more than $200,000,000.
2) Federal government creates Bureau of FREE AIR, to be part of the Department of Homeland Security.
3) In 2009, you get FREE AIR under the Federal Larry Kane FREE AIR Act.
4) In 2012, the Federal Larry Kane FREE AIR Act withstands a legal challenge, and a Supreme Court majority finds it’s an appropriate exercise of the tax & spend power and the power given to Congress under the Commerce Clause, air compressors being instrumentalities of interstate commerce.
5) We transcend time together and live in paradise for eternity!
George,
Try this sign:
1) If you want to run from Iraq and divert the trillion $s to social programs, vote for Obama.
2) If you want Pelosi and Reed running the US, vote for Obama.
3) If you want the Federal Gov’t running your Healthcare, vote for Obama.
4) If you think On the Job Training is a good idea when the Gov’t needs a strong, steady hand, vote for Obama.
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