Anyone who spent half an hour watching the returns last night after 7PM ET could have told you how the election was going to end up. I didn’t watch it with the fervor that I watched the 2000 or 2004 elections because quite frankly I didn’t have that much of a dog in this fight. Yes, I was hoping that the Messiah wouldn’t be anointed by the masses, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled over the prospect of a McCain victory. John McCain was never the choice of a conservative, nor did any other evil neoconservatives that I know feel their heart flutter in a Maverick love affair.

As the networks showed just how hesitant they were to call some of what we thought were to be reliable red states, I tuned out. I think that it is fair to measure disappointment by the amount of alcohol that one consumes in response to election results. I ended up drinking a measly beer and a half last night. I’m sure that the straight talk express was past the legal limit, but I can’t imagine that many ‘true’ conservatives actually felt that upset that we didn’t win. There is an important distinction to be made between disappointment that our side didn’t win and the disappointment that our rivals prevailed.

The latter is much more palpable, representing the bulk of Republican/Conservative/Bitter Typical White Person disappointment. As we rightly warned the Democrats in 2004, it is exponentially more difficult to win an election by voting against someone than it is to win an election by having genuine enthusiasm for a candidate of your own. (More on that later)

Barack Obama was able to create a sense of excitement among voters that we haven’t seen in a very long time. It doesn’t appear that Obama managed to truly redraw the map or create a flood of new voters as had been foreseen in many liberal crystal balls, but he energized his base and they did indeed turn out in force. The McCain plan to ‘appeal to the masses’ at the expense of the conservative core was a failure like we all anticipated it to be. Given who John McCain has been, and I have no qualms with his independent nature, it was the campaign he had to run. That doesn’t mean it the right opposition to a charismatic young star like Obama– it was the candidate we were dealt by a weak field and a poorly timed primary process.

As we saw the campaign develop it became clear to me that McCain wasn’t interested in playing hardball. Despite what the mainstream media reported, the McCain attack ads were late in the game, incoherent, and ignored the most potent (and legitimate) arguments against Barack Obama. Perhaps it was lingering scorn at how he was sunk by the Bush campaign in 2000 or just the strange sense of honor that McCain has followed his entire career (I choose to attribute the atrocious McCain-Feingold to this instead of deliberate curtailing of rights or naiveté) that kept him from hitting the Messiah hard, but whatever the reason– the attacks never stuck. McCain couldn’t even bring himself to the level of his own ads at the debates despite being given every opportunity to follow up on the love taps he’d been dishing out.

Blame is being placed at every foot to the ideological right of Larry Craig’s tapping loafers for the failure this time around. Palin is being torpedoed by staffers and George Bush is being blamed as per law. (I’m sure it was something passed around 2004 that requires George Bush to be complicit in any evil and/or unfortunate deed or event that takes place.) Since it appears from the numbers game that it was a lack of base turnout that contributed greatly to our loss, I think that pummeling Palin is out. If anything she shored up support by the conservative base, becoming the spoonful of sugar that helped most of us take our McMedicine. I find it hard to believe that George Bush is ultimately to blame for the election results either, as George Bush actually won reelection as George Bush in 2004. The fact alone that he was able to be reelected, with a much wider margin of victory, negates full blame for me. If voters considered McCain to be George Bush, George Bush himself shouldn’t have even come close to beating Kerry given that the assaults on his character and conduct haven’t really gained any new material since the 2004 campaign.

We can blame the economy and Bush’s support of the bailout, but McCain ended up supporting it as well. If the financial crisis were truly to be behind the loss this year, the margins should have been wider. We should have seen quite a bit more eroded support than we did. It was the number one issue to be sure, but it was the fault of the liberal members of Congress who forced the financial institutions to lend money to people who couldn’t repay it. George Bush fought against the rampant credit run-up, as did the Republicans, and it was so obvious that even Saturday Night Live acknowledged it! That McCain couldn’t make this fact stick, or even be bothered to espouse it to the public at every (or any) opportunity was a massive failure on the part of the campaign.

It was McCain’s campaign that controlled access to Sarah Palin. If she were truly the incompetent that she has been portrayed to be then it was up to the campaign to ready her for those “tough” questions and find her the proper venues to play to her strengths. They did neither, just as they didn’t go with the strongest attacks against Obama. We begged McCain to take the gloves off, people literally begged at the rallies, and the best we ever got was the last three minutes of his acceptance speech. That passion and power never showed itself again and it was that more than Palin or Dubya that drowned us.

The choice between McCain and Obama for independents never rested on the facts. McCain’s liberal tendencies didn’t stand a chance. The vast majority of casual Obama voters don’t really care about his positions, evidenced by their blind acceptance of his innumerable 180 degree turns on the issues. Instead they were truly inspired by hope and change. They pulled the lever literally hoping that things would get better. The nuts and bolts of how that might happen didn’t matter as much as the smile and smooth baritone of a good politicker. This fact doesn’t even bother them. This might change depending on the competence exhibited by Barry’s administration over the next four years, but don’t expect the mainstream media to be any more critical than they were during this campaign.

The best thing we have going for us is the apathy of the hanger-on. Those who thought Obama is the man with all the answers will find out that without constant rallies and get out the vote meetings that politics is truly boring and that one man doesn’t have all the answers. Hopefully by 2012 we will have a more charismatic and base-driven set of ideological leaders prying for the primaries.

All this aside, I don’t want it to appear that I’m bitter about Obama’s win. One thing that I think will be ignored by the left is the level of non-insanity that we exhibit at this loss. You don’t see the echo chamber filling with expletives and allegations of election stealing. You won’t. We respect the process and the office of the presidency. Obama won it, he’ll get his shot. Even though I disagree with him, I wish him well. I want our country to succeed, whoever is at the helm.

We’ll just have to see what happens and how quickly Biden’s prediction of testing will come to pass.

Keep the faith, my friends.*

More at: Right Wing Nut House | Michelle Malkin | Hot Air |

*At least we don’t have to hear that tired phrase anymore.

Tags: 2004 elections, 2008 election, barack obama, conservatives, crystal balls, disappointment, distinction, election results, fervor, genuine enthusiasm, half an hour, heart flutter, john mccain, love affair, maverick, mccain plan, messiah, red states, rivals, straight talk express, white person

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:41 PM and is filed under 2008 Race, Democrats, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.