The Precriminations
Like a lot of progressives, I’ve been enjoying the recent leaks out of conservoworld with different factions pointing fingers and accusing each other. These are some decent precriminations, and if things go the way the polls indicate, they’ll lead to some fantastic recriminations in November and December.
It’s worth saying, though, that there isn’t really much cause for it. The fact of the matter is that the unpopularity of George W. Bush and the Republican Party made for an unpromising situation, then along came an opponent who’d raised a ton of money and as summer turned to fall the economy started skidding downward. Under the circumstances, it’s just intrinsically difficult for a conservative candidate to win. McCain and his team have engaged in a lot of embarrassing flailing around over the past few months, and they’d do themselves a favor to avoid a lot of embarrassing post-election flailing. Doubt it’ll happen, though.
45 Responses to “The Precriminations”
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October 26th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
there will be lots of recriminations, but maybe not from mccain. i have been saying for months that he seems like a man who doesn’t want to win, like a man who felt duty-bound to run, but didn’t have the desire in his heart for being president. he has had the temper to flail about while making his heartless run, but i am in the camp that thinks he will go quietly and may very well resign his senate seat too.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I think the recriminations will not really be about the Presidential campaign, though that will be the common language. The cause is that conservatives got their President and got their congress and got their supine Democrats and they don’t think much came of it. They’re wondering what they’re doing in politics.
Now, of course, Bush did many, many things that they wanted, but because his Presidency is a failure they have some serious cognitive dissonance.
Fun for us!
October 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
It’s worth saying
Why is that, exactly?
October 26th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I think you give them way too much credit for logical thinking here. It’ll take more than a defeat or two to convince these psychos that they were ever wrong about anything, and and don’t forget that the world class wingnut talent for scapegoating. They badly need to find someone other than themselves to take the blame for going in two years from unchallenged control of both the executive and the congress to near irrelevance.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Justified or not, I’m pulling for it any way.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
It’s not merely recriminations– it’s the “Us vs. Them” strategy turning back on itself at long last, inevitably, and finally. With any luck, right-wing political groups will be too busy warring with one another to get in the way of national policy. But we’ll see.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
The real cause of their difficulty is the war. If the Republicans were willing to stand on their vetos in a very veto-ridden political system, win elections and lose them in suburbia, they’d never be facing the possibility of a catastrophic loss which Obama’s momentum makes likely, and they’d keep their unequal political system for as long as they liked. But doubling down on war has the potential for unravelling even seeming impervious political positions.
BTW, the discussion of needing 60 senators is off-base. Obama and Reid should pull the plug on the filibuster rule even if they have only 57 Senators, vote through their health plan and face the voters in 2010. It will be good immediate politics and good long-term politics both.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I agree with Atrios. While you are right. McCain has also run a very sucky campaign. Just look at his choice of Palin for starters.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going to buy myself a bag of marshmallows and toast ‘em over the fire!
October 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
John McCain and his campaign people have done NOTHING right since he got the nomination.
His choice of Palin was the dumbest move of all.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
We tended an elderly relative through her last years awhile back. She’d had the misfortune of getting her name on a wingnut mailing list. There’s apparently easy-picking among the wingnuts by assaulting the feeble-witted with scarifying fund-raising letters. That’s why there will be recriminations: there’s money in recriminations. For every legit GOP/conservative thinker, there are 10-20 hustlers and hacks, and these hustlers and hacks are tireless and shameless.
(For the record, the elderly relative was a lifelong Democrat and there were no — as in “0″ — scare-tactic Democratic fund-raising letters to her.)
October 26th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
It may have been difficult for a Republican to win the WH in this electoral climate, but McCain has run a shitty campaign. The awful Palin pick, the pathetic lurching to-and-fro in his campaign ’strategy’ (Matt Dowd rightly called it a ‘rudderless ship’ on Real Time Friday night), the sad debate performances, the accumulation of gaffes… it was inevitable that McCain would catch a significant part of the blame for the coming Obama/Democratic landslide next month, but it can’t be said that it’s unfair to do so.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Good points, but I disagree – I think an even slightly more capable GOP campaign could have made this a much closer election.
With a less erratic campaign, even if the Republicans still lost the White House, they would have held on to more congressional seats. A not-insignificant part of the coming Democratic landslide will be due to McCain.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Oh, and I forgot to mention McCain’s abandoning of his ‘maverick’ credentials by flip-flopping on so many issues and embracing so very many of the people he excoriated 8 years ago, from fundie preachers like Falwell to the people who slimed him so viciously in SC.
GOP dead-enders may be capable of dismissing this stuff when done by their side, but not the independent voters who used to support him and formed his REAL base.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I hate to say it, but you do have a point. To my eyes McCain has run the singularly worst campaign I’ve ever personally witnessed in my adult life (since I’ve been paying attention to politics anyway) which includes Dukakis, Bush I, Dole, Gore and Kerry, both in terms of how unappealing the candidate is and how incompetent the campaign is. Maybe it compares to the George McGovern debacle, I don’t know. But it’s been a bad campaign.
But still, up until a month ago he was running a close race, 4-7 point down, this, running after the most unpopular president in modern history (who he supported), the second (maybe first) most unpopular modern war (which he not only supported but defines him as a candidate), the greatest economic collapse since the great depression (of which — at best — certainly didn’t try and avert and which he’s show himself to be completely uncomprehending). With those fundamentals, it seems incredible, even with a perfectly running campaign that he would have a chance of winning a single electoral vote. Yet, he will probably get something like a third to a quarter of them.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
The circumstances were certainly bad for McCain, but it would be far too easy on him to blame the circumstances alone. The GOP campaign for President year may be the worst, in terms of self-inflicted screw-ups, that I can remember. And I’m old enough to remember McGovern in ‘72 — vaguely, I was a kid then, but I think the case can be made the McCain campaign has been worse than McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and all of the rest for more than thirty years. He probably beats Goldwater in ‘64 for sheer awfulness as well.
The choice of Palin as running mate; the campaign suspension and otherwise thoroughly inept reaction to the financial crisis; and the parade of lies and hateful negative attacks that have gone on during the last month — any one of things were unforced errors that, by themselves, could have enough to sink a candidacy. But this campaign seems to pile on one blunder after another, day after day, on and on and on.
Matt, you’ve cited the financial crisis and Obama’s fundraising as some of the “bad circumstances”, but neither one of these necessarily had to go so badly for McCain. He could have reacted to the financial crisis more skillfully — after all, Obama’s handling of the situation greatly strengthened his candidacy. And as for the fundraising disadvantage, that is to a large extent an effect of McCain’s poor performance rather than a cause of it.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
BTW, I think, upon reading Atrios’ post that part of the disagreement is what constitutes ‘campaign.’ I don’t consider McCain’s support of Bush through his second term part of the campaign, but rather the fundamentals that his campaign was given, along with his support of the war and refusal to position himself moderately on financial issues through the 00s. But, even if they weren’t campaign decisions (and it would certainly be fair to call them that as well) they certainly were political decisions that he made that have cost him greatly.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
You really can’t separate circumstances from the Republican record. Republicans created the circumstances they’ve been made to run in. McCain wasn’t brought low by things he couldn’t control. Quite the opposite, really.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
As bad as McCain has shown himself to be during this campaign, it’s not a complete surprise, at least to me. Recall, all the other potential candidates had some serious liabilities. The result is that McCain really was probably the strongest GOP contender out there. But as Matt points out, the battle was going to be all uphill regardless. To make things worse, McCain’s early support, if you recall, was mysteriously strong among middle of the road voters, particularly anti-war voters. The wheels were destined to come off that one sooner or later. Palin did wonders for his support among the base, but drove the spike into the middle of the road voters. If by some small miracle McCain wins, we can look forward to some serious flailing for the next four years.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Yglesias, I think all Democrats should cease issuing any words that might comfort the Republicans as they carve each other into little pieces.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
sadly, no.
no one who’s willing to put up with the nonstop bullshit of running for president doesn’t want to be president. especially john mccain, who wrote in his 2000 book “worth the fighting for”:
mccain already admitted his fundamental problem eight years ago: he has absolutely nothing to offer the voter. he just wants to sit in the big chair.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Re “he just wants to sit in the big chair”
Cindy McCain is the one who sits in the Big Chair — John is just there to fetch her a cell phone or drink whenever she needs it.
And to handle tedious chores like “governing”.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I’m not sympathetic to the “reluctant warrior” portrait of McCain. He’s tried to portray himself as Mr. Honor and Duty, somehow above all the sleaze, but his hands are as dirty as anyone’s in that campaign, including all the Rovians and Bushites he (willingly) recruited.
He approved his campaign’s messages. He approved their strategic tacks and feints. He may not be aware of every bit of wording in every bit of literature and robocall, but he for sure was in on the big decisions, and I expect most of the medium-sized ones too.
And let’s not forget that Mr. Honor and Duty was up to his nipples in the S&L scandal, which was as prime an example of sleazy-log-rolling-bordering-on-outright-corruption as I can recall in decades of very sleazy Republicanism.
He’s basically just another Republican hack who happened to have established a persona that worked well for this moment, and EVERY hack, Republican or Democrat, who makes it to the Senate thinks he or she has what it takes to sit in the Oval Office.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Barack hasn’t won yet – polls are unreliable indicators of the final result. This election will be very close and could go either way.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
“…polls are unreliable indicators of the final result.”
You don’t say! Amazing, then, that so much money is spent on them, since that’s basically their entire reason to exist.
Just curious–what’s an example of a recent election where the polls were unreliable predictors of the final result?
October 26th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
At the end of the day, Republicans failed because they finally got to implement their agenda. Under George Bush, for the first time since the 1950’s, Republicans controlled all 3 branches of government. And it was a radical group of Republicans at that.
Since 1932, this group of Republicans have been bitching and moaning that the problem is government. Government can’t do ANYTHING right. Their radical agenda? They wanted to make taxes more regressive. They wanted to get rid of regulation. They wanted to cripple unions. They wanted to send all economic growth to the investor class. They wanted to deficit spend. They wanted to fight aggressive neocolonial wars. They wanted to kill the signature New Deal program–Social Security. And under Bush, they got damn near everything they wanted.
By 2008, this gang actually believed “government sucks” was a legitimate governing ideology. That “deliver pork to key constituencies to win” was an actual legislative strategy, as opposed to an electoral evil one attempts to avoid as much as possible. They actually believed their own bullshit about self-regulating markets, and trickle down, and tax cuts leading to higher revenue, and “deficits don’t matter” and “we’ll be greeted as liberators.”
It’s been pointed out that the McCain campaign has degenerated into a war room pretending to be a political campaign. You can likewise argue that the Republican party has degenerated into an opposition party that is no longer fit to govern.
Look at the House Republicans’ response to the Paulson plan. Our nation was standing at the brink of financial collapse, and they voted down a plan in favor of their own utter nonsense “plan”. No one with a brain in their head believed the House Republican plan would do anything to unfreeze credit markets or prevent a full financial meltdown. But it made for some nice soundbites, so they could oppose the unpopular plan that went into effect, while pointing to their own magical pony plan and sighing “oh, if only you’d gone with our magic painless and free plan…” They actually think taking potshots is governing! It’s insane!
In 1932, a fringe of very irresponsible Republicans came up with “government sucks and ruins everything” as the core of their domestic policy, in reaction to FDR’s New Deal. In the 1940’s, they came up with “who lost China” as a political attack as a counter to Democrats’ success winning WWII–and by 2008, the idiot neocons had actually turned a cheap political hit into an ideological worldview, arguing that the US could do achieve any foreign policy outcome it wanted, so long as we wanted it hard enough. When Reagan–a man who warned Medicare would make us slaves–took office, the irresponsible Republicans really started taking things over. And under Bush, for the first time since 1950, Republicans controlled all three branches of Government. And they implemented their agenda, which led us off a damn cliff.
It’s vitally important to note that the reason it’s hard for a conservative to win in 2008 isn’t because George Bush was harmed by events “beyond his control.” It’s because conservatism got us where we are right now, with 90% of the country thinking we’re on the wrong track! It’s not coincidence that as we’ve implemented Republican ideology over the past 30 years, median incomes have stagnated. It’s not coincidence that the top 1% are sucking up all GDP growth, and that our unregulated and over-capitalized financial markets are in a tailspin while median families are borrowing to finance consumption! And Jesus Christ, how can you deficit spend the way the Republicans have over the past 30 years and see such paltry economic growth?
The Republican party are not victims of circumstances beyond their control. They are reaping exactly what they’ve sown.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
People like CSI are cute, in a grotesque ignorance kind of way.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
You say that like these things happened in a vacuum. These circumstances were caused, and they were caused by the failures of conservatism as an ideology and as a movement. There’s plenty of incriminations to go ’round.
Wait to see the Bushistas start laying into things, too, as soon as November 5th rolls around.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
The only logical discussion that should occur about politics is how will the U.S. funciton as a one party state. It should be clear to anyone that the Republicans are not going to make a comeback.
So the next question is what will the dynamics of the House and Senate be when most members do not face any opposition for reelection. HOw will politics function when there is a single election in each generation for a particular state unless the sitting politician bequests the seat to a relative?
The second question is what happens when the Democratic primary is the real electon and the general election is just a rubber stamp on the primary results. Will the Democratic primary attempt to limit access in the Democratic primary and limit the use of referendum and initiative?
October 26th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
The Republicans aren’t going to just disappear. They, and Blue Dog-like Dems, will still be making trouble. There are plenty of people in the country who just don’t understand the politics and policy and wind up falling for Republican/conservative rhetoric.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
“This election will be very close and could go either way.”
Is this the electoral-prognosticating version of the claim that “truth is probably somewhere in the middle”–the dogmatism that parades as healthy skepticism?
October 27th, 2008 at 1:24 am
The only logical discussion that should occur about politics is how will the U.S. funciton as a one party state. It should be clear to anyone that the Republicans are not going to make a comeback.
These projections are based on immigration and changing demographics. Illegal immigration has already reduced and actually started going backward, and I think that reducing legal immigration will also start happening soon.
The hopes of folks like Matt and the fears of folks like superdestroyer about our demographics destryong the GOP will probably be unfounded once the grassroots finally stakes the amnesty plans in the heart.
2007 was the high-water mark for “dissolving the people and electing another.”
October 27th, 2008 at 1:45 am
A new ironic Palin cartoon at the Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 blog: “ItsAllMcCainsFault.com” (no. 2 in a series).
October 27th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Glaivester,
When you realize that the less than half of the children in kindergarten are white, there is no hope for a long term rebound by the Repulbicans.
You should also consider that the number of private sector middle class white are too smal to sustain a political party, then the only conclcusion is that the Democratic Party will be the only relevant political party.
The next question is what percentage of the GDP will the government consume to maintain the big tent Democratic Party.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
It is mistake to think the coming recriminations will only be about the WH. Last I looked, the GOP is being decimated in Congress also.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Superdestroyer and Glaivester,
As much I wish to believe that the GOP will cease to exist, I know that reality will prevent that. There will always be a need and a want for a conservative political party in American politics, and therefore the Republican Party will never go away. It may change its name (like it did before, when it used to be the Whig Party), but it will continue to exist in American politics, even in heavily Democratic states.
BTW, racial demographics are not destiny, which means that the increasing share of non-whites in the American population won’t automatically translate into increased votes for Democrats. Republicans can re-tool themselves to appeal to a larger share of polically moderate white voters who agree with the GOP on taxation and government spending but who are turned off by the culture war-waging, Sarah Palin-loving wing of the GOP. Therefore, even if whites make up a smaller and smaller share of the population, the GOP can improve its share of the white vote to offest Democratic gains from increased Black and Latino populations.
Moreover, by adopting a Colin Powell stance on affirmative action and immigration, the GOP can improve its standing among Black and Latino voters who are religious traditionalists. This too would offset Democratic gains due to increased numbers of Black and Latino voters.
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