Why McCain Is Losing This Election

Nick Schweitzer has a post about his thoughts on why McCain is doing so poorly. His hypothesis can be summed up by simply saying the McCain wasn't conservative enough. Knowing Nick's position of being a Libertarian, I can appreciate what he is trying to say. However, I think, with all due respect, that Nick is being overly simplistic in his opinion.

McCain never started with a strong footing in this race. He never seemed to have overwhelming support during the primaries. Indeed, from the local bloggers that I read, I cannot remember one of them backing McCain during that time. However, the Republicans were so torn between all of the other candidates that McCain was able to keep going long enough to win the nomination. Even now, most local right wing bloggers, with the notable exception of Cindy Kilkenny, cannot seem to bring themselves to endorse McCain, but would rather attack Obama.

McCain might have garnered more support if he was more conservative. This was obvious with the initial jump in the polls after he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. The right was gushing all over themselves because of her strong conservative positions on things like abortion and guns. But even if McCain was more conservative, I don't think it would have been enough to save his campaign.

I think that McCain's bigger problem was his overall campaign strategy. McCain chose to attack Obama and take a very negative approach, while Obama would focus more on the issues. This strategy backfired on McCain, as evidenced by a recent poll done by the New York Times. The poll shows that a growing number of people are being turned off by the negativity, the hate-mongering, and the fear-mongering.

Anger and fear are two sides of the same emotional coin, and both are exhausting, both physically and spiritually. Both anger and fear are useful survival responses that cause a flow of adrenaline, heighten one's awareness and can stimulate the fight-or-flight response. However, these emotions are too draining to maintain for extremely long amounts of time. And the Republican Party has been asking the citizenry to maintain them for seven years now.

Bush used it shortly after 9/11 to argue for his unjust war in Iraq. He used the same fear and smear tactics to win re-election in 2004. Now McCain, Palin, the right wingers of the media (like Sykes, Belling, Limbo and Hasbeenity) and the bloggers have been throwing everything they can think of in the hopes of taking down Obama.

They try to tie Obama to ACORN, and scream voter fraud. However, McCain has been a supporter of ACORN.

They try to tie Obama to Ayers, and call him a terrorist. But McCain has his own ties to terrorists and a corrupt past to boot.

They've played the race card, including this new one that Obama isn't really black, but one of them terroristic A-rabs.

They complain that no one knows Obama, even though they've been harping about him for two years. Then they give us Palin, who is a relatively unknown politician, and won't let her talk to the media or campaign by herself.

They complain that Obama doesn't have any firm ideas, but give us McCain that has changed his mind on issues so often that he doesn't even know where he stands on them anymore.

The list goes on and on.

But for the most part, these attacks have been ineffective at best, and are now producing a backlash. This is because of several reasons. Like I just wrote, people are sick and tired of being angry and scared. They are also more terrified of the ongoing economic crises than events that happened generations ago. Furthermore, these attacks have ranged from the absurd to the offensive.

But it really comes down to the fact that people are sick of the Iraq War and they're scared to death about the financial crises this nation is facing. Both of these are the products of a Republican administration and a Republican-controlled Congress (for six of the last eight years anyway). They aren't happy about it, and they want to have a change. They want to move from the hate, the anger and the fear. And the opposite of those things is Hope. And no matter how mavickry McCain and Palin claim to be, they are still the Republican ticket, and are espousing the same ideals that got us into this situation.

And when the McCain/Palins/squawkers of the world refuse to address these issues that concern the people, but try to give us more of the fear and the anger and the hatred, they only hurt themselves, and drive the voters away.

I think that they realize this now. That is why we are already hearing the ever-growing cries of voter fraud and the accusations that the election is being stolen. Which is really ironic considering their own behaviors and attitudes during the election in 2000 and 2004.