{"id":5017,"date":"2008-10-21T11:38:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T18:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5017"},"modified":"2008-10-21T11:38:40","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T18:58:28","slug":"the-best-take-on-the-mccain-campaign-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5017","title":{"rendered":"The Best Take on the McCain Campaign Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Taylor\u2019s return to the blogosphere has been full of win, but this is his thing de r\u00e9sistance<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think John McCain is running the sleaziest campaign in recent memory<\/a>.\u00a0 I think he\u2019s just running one of the most prominently stupid.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not so much that McCain\u2019s campaign has been purposefully sleazy as they\u2019ve been meanderingly, pointlessly sleazy.\u00a0 It\u2019s the \u201cfuck it, whatever\u201d guide to Republican politics, with no particular focus except putting anything out there to win a daily news cycle.\u00a0 Obama was a conspirator in voter fraud for a weekend, a terrorist for about three days, until he was a socialist because some plumber in Ohio said so.\u00a0 Before that he was a celebrity and presumptuous, a race-baiter, a shady community organizer, sexist, inexperienced, a baby killer, a sex predator and a dozen other things.\u00a0 You wonder why McCain\/Palin supporters feel like they can go to rallies and talk about Obama being a Jew-bought Islamic radical cokehead forced abortionist communist?\u00a0 Because it\u2019s the standard that the campaign\u2019s set by having ridiculously drawn out public conversations designed to draw full attention to the charges while laboring under the pretense that they\u2019re \u201cdebating\u201d over using the smear.<\/p>\n

Am I going to call McCain a Neo-Nazi?\u00a0 Don\u2019t know – maybe I will, maybe I won\u2019t.\u00a0 It might reflect poorly on me, but it might also be a useful strategy.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to go call up Mike Allen at Politico.com and talk to him about it on the record\u2026you know, just to have a sounding board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spot on, and a big part of the reason McCain is going to lose this election. ((As always, the fact that this election is almost certain to go Obama\u2019s way is no reason to get complacent. After all, at this point, I think most Democrats don\u2019t want just a win, we want to tap-dance on the GOP\u2019s hopes and dreams.)) It\u2019s not just with regard to Obama, either \u2014 he\u2019s never had a coherent message this entire campaign. His \u201cCountry First\u201d slogan rings hollow when he picks Sarah Palin to be his veep; he proclaimed that the fundamentals of the economy were strong just before declaring that the economy was such a disaster that he had to suspend his campaign. His campaign has bounced from theme to theme, sometimes in the same day, as it desperately tries to find something, anything, that will work to make today better. Right now McCain is all Joe the Plumber, all the time, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be working<\/a>;Palin is rolling out Tito the Builder<\/a> ((Can we fix it? \u00a1S\u00ed <\/em>se puede!<\/em>)), and no doubt we\u2019ll here about Stu the Electrical Contractor soon enough. (It goes without saying we won\u2019t be hearing from Jane the Senior Vice President for Human Resources, of course.) And the McCain camp is threatening to pull out Jeremiah Wright, maybe, because we all weren\u2019t sick of that six months ago. And there will be other crazy crap thrown out, because that\u2019s how McCain rolls.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Barack Obama continues to push the same theme he\u2019s pushed the whole campaign \u2014 Change You Can Believe In. Obama hasn\u2019t veered in any direction at any point, even when things were tough a month or so a go. He\u2019s kept his head down, and just kept advancing his message, relentlessly. He\u2019s built up a solid lead that\u2019s allowing him the luxury of taking two days off from campaigning to visit his sick grandmother in Hawai\u2019i \u2014 and even that is being done deliberately and calmly, and with an absence of surrogates going on television to explain how this ties into Obama\u2019s brand new plan to give everyone a $500 tax credit so they can visit their grandma.<\/p>\n

Presidential campaigns are a dumb way to pick a candidate, but they can be illuminating. In this race, we\u2019ve had one candidate maintain a steady, consistent tone, a man who can keep his focus when times get tough, who reacts to crises with calm, measured, and level-headed actions. We\u2019ve had another candidate who has been in full panic mode for over a year, one who bounces from idea to idea without pausing to consider the long-term ramifications. One of those men has demonstrated qualities that would be good in a leader \u2014 the ability to stay calm, to not panic, to work not just for short-term gain, but for long-term stability. And the other is John McCain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesse Taylor\u2019s return to the blogosphere has been full of win, but this is his thing de r\u00e9sistance: I don\u2019t think John McCain is running the sleaziest campaign in recent memory.\u00a0 I think he\u2019s just running one of the most … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}