John McCain isn’t dead in the water. But he sure is dying. He lost the debate and the polls are dismal. Gallup has him down 50-42. Rasmussen has Obama ahead 50-44. And both polls are only partially after the debate. Obama won the debate. When the polls come in fully after the debate, the picture won’t get any prettier for those of us who favor McCain.
His gambit of suspending his campaign and going to Washington has failed because he did not think it through adequately or correlate it with what was happening in Congress. The Republicans teed up a perfect shot for him. He took the bat but went back to the dugout without even swinging. McCain should have gone into the debate challenging Obama on his $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial institutions. He should have pushed the Republican alternative. He could have said, plain and simple, that Obama wants to make Americans pay for $700 billion in bad mortgages and McCain wants to make businesses pay for their own bailout through loans and insurance premiums. It would have been a straight shot. But McCain copped out and mumbled something about the deal being the “end of the beginning” and said he hoped to vote for the bailout. It was a failure that may have cost him his best shot at the presidency.
But not his only shot. McCain can still win.
He needs to deploy the tax issue. His campaign has to stop the scattershot web ads and focus instead on a sustained attack on Obama’s plans for tax increases. Stop the pinpricks and go for the jugular. It is only through the tax issue that McCain can win this campaign.
Voters understand that our economy is vulnerable and teetering on the brink of a black hole. McCain needs to capitalize on this new sense of vulnerability and hammer away at the Obama tax proposals. He needs to say that our system is starving for capital. Raising capital gains taxes, much less doubling it as Obama proposed during the primaries (but now is trying to backtrack), is like taxing water in the desert. McCain has to talk about Obama’s spending proposals and mock the idea that he can spend a trillion and still give “95% of Americans” a tax increase.
McCain should take a page out of the playbook of the endgame of the Bush 1992 campaign. With Bill Clinton holding a solid lead, Bush was reluctant to attack him for his record of tax increases, especially given his violation of his 1988 “read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes. So the campaign sent Vice President Dan Quayle out to attack Clinton, day after day, for raising taxes. And the results were clear in the polls. Bush gained each day and, four days before Election Day, Bush took a lead over Clinton in the tracking polls. Clinton was saved by the announcement by Iran Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh that he was planning to indict Cap Weinberger, Bush’s Defense Secretary. Clinton surged ahead and won the election. But the tax issue had almost reversed his lead in the polls.
If McCain pounds away at taxes, taxes, taxes he can still win this election. By tying the Obama tax plans to the possibility of massive depression, he can pull this out.
Remember: Whenever we raised taxes amidst a downturn, we triggered a massive falloff. It was the tax increases of the early 30s that worsened the Great Depression and it was Bush’s 1990 tax increase that created the 1991 recession that cost him his job. America understands that we can’t raise taxes now. American grasps that Obama will not just raise taxes on a handful of rich people but will raise them on everybody. And we understand that Obama has no real answer to this charge. McCain just needs to begin to make this central attack his campaign theme from now on.
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Hi Dick, thanks for seeing a path for McCain still to the finish. Jeez yesterday was depressing to see the likes of Pelosi and Franks continuing to take cheap shots even as the bailout floundered–what a disappointment the political leaders in this country are to me! So many of them complicit in the events/decisions that have brought us to the worst financial markets in 2 generations and yet they continue to focus on their own selfish objectives.
It was so disappointing to have read your post on Friday about McCain being positioned to bring an agreement in the bailout negotiations and leverage it for the debate and then watch him literally ignore the discussion. The more I consider him the more I find him hot and cold. It is going to be difficult for him to defeat the great agent of change, who is so much more articulate about the overview–lord help us when we watch how Mr. Obama actually leads/manages during the incredible challenges we are going to face in the next 4 years!
These are the two best choices the US could come up with during one of our most challenging times? Says a lot about the condition of our country, having spent the last 2 months working in D.C. I sure hope that the jadedness of the the inhabitants is not a sample of what the rest of the US is going to become–litter everywhere, more governmental employees doing little if anything, terrible customer service, drugs being sold openly on street corners, rampant crime, elite leadership safely cocooned from the public.
I am so profoundly struck that after 14 months of finish turmoil the politicians and government leaders in our country seem to have been without a clue in regards to steps to be taken to handle the “de-leveraging of the U.S. and International economies that are the direct result of Alan Greenspan’s policies. I am struck with the feeling that no one has been doing any “what if” planning for the last 14 months, that is so profoundly sad to me–a local fire department does a better job of preparing contingency plans. It leads me to conclude that the leadership of this country is truly isolated from the real world and their association with the excessive wealth created out of “thin air” by wall street in the derivatives markets (once again my grandfather was correct, “you can not make chicken salad from chicken shit”) has blinded them to their criminally neglectful political leadership in the last 10 years in this country.
I am beginning to think that Jack Lessinger (author of Transformation) and his prediction of a depression during the transition from the “Little Kings” era to the “Caring Conservers” era is spot on–I am buckling down the hatches when I get back to the Northwest.
Jeffrey
Jeffrey
I agree with you that he completely wasted a huge opportunity with the bailout and the debate.
I also wish McCain would get out in front of temporarily ceasing the mark-to-market rule. If Bush would make it happen, it would be a huge shot in the arm to the credit markets.
Last, I think McCain’s campain should use Fred Thompson’s explanation of the Obama tax increase proposal from the convention. It’s so simple to follow, even the average American can get it.
From Fred Thompson:
“John McCain understands that you don’t lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in history.
They say- don’t worry about the tax increases. We aren’t gonna tax YOUR family. No we’re just gonna tax businesses. So, unless you buy something from a business….like groceries, clothes or gasoline…..it won’t effect YOU. ….Or unless you get a paycheck from a business. Don’t worry. It’s not going to effect you. They say they won’t take any water out of YOUR side of the bucket, just the other side of the bucket. That’s their idea of tax reform.”
McCain should use this material!
John McCain has maneuvered himself into a political dead end and has five weeks to find his way out…..and I don’t think that he can. McCain inserted himself into a $700 billion effort to rescue America’s crumbling financial structure and in so doing, he tied himself far more tightly to the bill than did his Democratic opponent. Congress will eventually bail out the “greed merchants” and the taxpayer will be burden with paying the bad debts and assets, and that doesn’t include the Iraq and Afganastain wars will which will add another trillion or two before it is all over; and Congress will privatized the profits back to the Wall Street vaccum cleaners.
In the end, tax are going to be raised…how much……depends upon who get elected…..and right now……Obama would seem to have a short distance to travel to the White House. Bend over American taxpayers and begin to receive the greedy rich and inept leaders.
Dick,
Would you please do a little pro bono for McCain?
Kind regards
El
Now is not the time for the McCain campaign to avoid addressing US economy. They should not only continue with their argument that no tax hikes will stimulate the economy, but give the public the educated perspective we want to hear. We already know Joe and Jane Doe are hurting financially. We want to hear solutions. Socialist governments in the UK and Europe have not helped them avoid this economic crisis. People can commit to less spending on credit and instead to saving money. Now is the time for some sort of call to the public like Jack Kennedy made. Governor Palin alluded to such action in her debate with Senator Biden. McCain’s campaign can follow up with more of the same suggestions. The suggestions is, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”