Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Sorry about my North Carolina call

Months ago I said Sen. McCain would carry North Carolina by 10%.

I was counting on McCain makiing the Obama-Wright friendship and working alliance a major campaign issue. He didn't.

I was also counting on McCain tagging Obama as a liberal. He didn't do that either.

When Joe the plumber finally did, McCain finally joined in. But he said both too little late, and his ham-fisted charges of "socialism" struck many voters as extreme and desperate.

They were certainly desperate and let's hope now that Sen. Obama will be President the charges of "socialism" will prove to be in fact extreme, (I'd also be happy if the "liberal" label were to prove to have been extreme, too.)

Despite McCain's silence on Wright and his failure to tag Obama with the liberal label I predicted McCain would still carry NC by about 4%.

Well, as most of you know, he didn't.

I'm sorry to have been wrong. I hope I didn't mislead any of you too badly.

I'll say more later today about McCain's campaign in North Carolina.

In the meantime, congratulations to Sen. Obama and his supporters.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nicely and graciously put. I started following your commentary during the Duke LAX fiasco (a "call" by the way which you made and which was completely correct). While it was clear we were not "on the same page" politically, I considered your material interesting and thoughtful. This last remark just confirms my impressions. As a country, we're in challenging times. We need to hang tough together.

Anonymous said...

John: You, along with many, many other McCain supporters have offered gracious congratulations to Predident Elect Obama and his supporters. Had McCain won instead, I suspect many American cities would now be in flames. Sad, but true. Steve in New Mexico

Anonymous said...

Obama is not "my President" but he is President of my country. I wish him God's blessing to be the best President he can be. Steve in New Mexico

Anonymous said...

To Hell with "gracious".

I have every intention of showing Obama the same courtesy and respect he and his ilk have shown towards their chosen enemies.

I shall be sure to spread every wacko tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theory I run across.

I shall blame him for everything and anything, as they've done Bush. I shall ridicule his intellect, as they'd done to Reagan.

I shall question his motives, his patriotism, his actions, his inactions, and generally begrudge him the oxygen he steals.

Bottom line: I'm tired of the left behaving badly, then hypocritically projecting their misbehavior on the right with blatantly false accusations... It's a classic "community organizer" tactic. They get political mileage out of their mudslinging, and when attention is called to their misdeeds, they repeat the process with accusations that they are being falsely accused to divert attention from their accuser's misdeeds!

Well, if the right is going to be painted as a pack of hateful racist warmongering neanderthals anyway, I see no reason to play nice.

Playing hardball might not be in the best interests of the nation IN THE SHORT TERM, but the left has depended upon the right's innate sense of responsibility to run roughshod over us... And I'm no longer willing to allow my ethics and patriotism to be used against me by unethical, unpatriotic hypocrites.

Anonymous said...

I'm like anon 12:34.

I don't agree with you're politics but you're always interesting and avoid partisan extremism.

You've been right about the Duke case from the start. You've also opened my eyes to how biased MSM can be, something I missed before coming here and following the Duke case.

I consider myself a liberal but like you I want my news straight up.

Good luck and stay on the N&O, Duke, and the rest.

A Kinston reader

Anonymous said...

The second "you're" in the first line should be "your."

Sorry about that.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous - correction:

Actually your first you're should be your, not the second!

LOL :-)

Anonymous said...

There is an in-depth analysis of the exit polls here: http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Vote2008/story?id=6189129&page=1
The article also gives a breakdown of the exit polls in NC. From a local perspective a few things stand out. The first is tone. Two-thirds of voters said the McCain campaign attacked Obama unfairly. I thought it was interesting that the backlash from Dole's "Godless" ad attack in NC worked to her opponent's advantage.
Clearly, she managed to turn off some of her own supporters with that strategy. McCain had an early
dispute with the Republican party in NC over the tone of one of their negative ads as well. As election day approached the robo-calls and national ads focusing on Ayers and questioning Obama's patriotism became more frequent. It is difficult to say how many undecided voters were swayed by these attacks. My opinion is that it probably cost McCain among those who were undecided. I do think it played well among those who were going to vote for McCain regardless.
The other thing that Obama did well in NC compared to McCain was the direct contact of voters. The Obama campaign reached many more people that the McCain folks. In my opinion some of this is due to McCains late start in NC. It seemed a safe bet for McCain to focus on other states where he knew there would be a tight race. By the time McCain,s campaign recognized that this would be a close call, Obama already had a considerable head start. This resulted in Obama doing a much better job in registering new voters and getting them to vote early. I have seen some estimates showing Obama had a NC lead of close to 100,000 already in the bank prior to election day, putting the final margin of roughly 11,000 votes in perspective.
Of course the economy was the main issue with voters both in NC as well as on a national basis. McCain did a poor job, in my opinion, with his handling of the financial crisis at the time he suspended his campaign and considered skipping the first debate. He had an opportunity there and he mishandled it. I also felt the Joe the Plumber issue became one of personality over that of policy. McCain appropriately jumped on that one but instead of focusing on the tax difference between the two parties, he chose to focus on Joe as a person and made him a central part of his campaign in the last few weeks. The problem with that was simply one of Joe not being a good example of the policy differences McCain should have been focusing on. The results in Ohio show that Joe really did not have the impact McCain was hoping for.
Then there is the Sarah Palin factor. I don't think Sarah hurt the campaign in NC, I think that is the reason some voters (about half compared to two-thirds for McCain) in NC also felt the Obama campaign attacked unfairly. My opinion is the McCain campaign picked an energetic and charismatic running mate, then proceeded to stifle her as much as possible.

(Oh well), it is a done deal now and the finger pointing has begun. I wanted to say that your attitude about this has been commendable, I don't think anyone could accuse you of being a sore loser.

Anonymous said...

4:44 - I am sick to death of partisan politics, finger pointing, bickering, name calling, the sabotaging of ideas simply because they were presented by "the other party". We as a nation have some SERIOUS problems to resolve across a broad spectum and the only way for us to progress and move forward is to work together for the good of the country, not for the "party". Maybe, just maybe, Obama is the guy who can pull this off. I hope to hell he is. As I said earlier, he is not my President but he is President of my country. I wish him well. Steve in New Mexico