Sunday, October 5, 2008

Bad news helps Obama

Even Republican strategists agree that the economic crisis has hurt McCain's political standing and helped Obama's. Economicsts by a large margin prefer Obama.

And there is more bad news coming. As Georgia Will pointed out on This Week, over the next few days, millions and millions of Americans will be getting their third quarter 401k statements and will see just had bad their losses are in this crisis.

In addition, the monthly job statistics were released on Friday, October 3rd -- 159,000 jobs lost in September. If that timing of the report is the usual, then the figures for October will be released the day before the election -- and with the market and credit losses, it's likely to be even worse.

This bad economic news is bad political news for John McCain. He is in dire, desperate straits, and he cannot afford any more bad news.

His campaign seems to think their only chance is character assasination. I agree with George Will who says that will not work this time, that McCain's only chance at this point is to remind people that they prefer divided government, where a president of one party rides herd on a congress of the other party. Therefore they must elect him to offset the expected increase in the Democratic majority in Congress. That's a pretty weak reason to vote for somebody who has lost your vote on every other criterion.

Add these thoughts to my previous post about the electoral vote mountain McCain would have to climb, and it's looking more and more like a sure thing that Barak Obama will be sworn in on January 20th as president of the United States.

Ralph

2 comments:

Ralph said...

More good news:

Remember (speaking to myself) that polls go up and polls go down !!!

BUT: it now looks within the realm of possibility that we could wind up with a filibuster-proof count of 60 Democratic senators.

Al Franken has moved into a good lead over Coleman in Minnesota; Elizabeth Dole is behind in NC; and Mitch McConnel is in trouble in KY. National news is even commenting on the tightening race in GA as another possible turnover.

Ralph said...

I don't want Obama to go sleazy in exposing McCain, but there is plenty of true stuff that could be used and will probably come out from somewhere.

Rolling Stone's latest issue has a devastating article on McCain's character that is more chilling than I had known before. It's "Make-Believe Maverick" at: www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

Also Palin should think twice about her current attack on Obama for "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." Some people might be reminded of her connections with the Alaksa Independence Party whose primary goal seems to be the secession of the state from the US. The founder was killed in an explosion of bomb making materials. And Todd Palin was a card-carrying member of the organization for 5 years, until Sarah began running for governor. And since being governor she has sent a taped message welcoming the party and wishing them well at their convention.

Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers has nothing to do with his involvement in the radical movement 40 years ago and everything to do with working together with a reformed Ayers on educational issues to benefit their community.

But presumably Sarah Palin was actually sleeping with an active member of the AIP just 6 years ago.