Day of Reckoning 2: Why John McCain Will (Probably) Lose (Tonight)

Two nights ago, I had addressed the potential for Barack Obama to lose this presidential contest. I had argued that, while the polls and all political indicators, so far, have been pointing to an Obama victory, the number of uncertainties that are part and parcel of this election cycle should not be entirely overlooked. Among the uncertainties that could lead to a surprise McCain victory (racism and mistrust of white Americans towards Obama, Bradley effect, voter complacency and overconfidence, effect of John McCain’s negative attacks, last-minute surge towards John McCain by the undecided, erroneous poll predictions, acts of God, etc.), I zoomed at, perhaps, the only single weakness that one could attribute to the Obma campaign: naïveté, and perhaps, an implicit dose of complacency, especially as they relate to the Obama belief that being positive all the way was going to win this election for him. Read more

Of Sex, Libido and the $150,000 Clothing Spree: Notes on the Incredible Arousal of Sarah Palin

Could Sarah Palin have been hiding a repressed libido? The many faces and transformations of Sarah Palin since joining the McCain presidential ticket are shockingly telling. Those changing faces have fascinated me so much (and perhaps you too?) that I have decided to conduct a small and very brief psychoanalysis of Sarah Palin’s awakening libidinal impulses in the context of her $150,000 clothing spree.

Let me begin with what I called “the incredible arousal of Sarah Palin” in the title of this article. And I want to be as purposefully ambiguous and cowardly as possible, hence my decision to hide my duplicity and duplicitous thoughts behind the many meanings of the word “arousal,” which, indeed, can mean “stimulation,” “awakening,” “excitement”, among many other meanings and insinuations which I prefer not to list here. Read more

Of John McCain and His America: It Is Apocalypse Now

It all began with the “Barack-Obama-is-an-Arab” lady at a McCain town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota last week. Responding to what she naturally thought had become the official, cathartic McCain/Palin electoral mantra, the woman, a certain Gayle Quinnell, stated that she did not trust Barack Obama because Barack Obama, she had read (in some McCain/Palin literature), was an Arab.

To which John McCain, in a telling “reap what you sow” moment, responded:

“No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

What’s troubling in McCain’s answer are a number of dangerous innuendoes which are not immediately apparent to most people, but which are striking to those with enough intellectual sense (Am I being elitist here? Well, hell).

McCain’s answer suffers from a fundamental flaw which, as I said, is not immediately apparent to most people, until, of course, one realizes that McCain did not defend Obama on the grounds that Obama was, indeed, as American as John McCain and Gayle Quinnell themselves were.  Rather, he “defended” Obama on the more tenuous ground that his opponent was a “decent” family man and “a citizen.” Read more

Watch: What if John McCain wanted to lose?

An October 14 article by Sam Stein on the Huffington Post this week got me thinking. As I read it more and more, one interesting idea came to me: “What if John McCain actually wanted to lose?”

The gist of Sam Stein’s article is summarized in the first four paragraphs of the article as so:

Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.

Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would “have to live” with that fact for the rest of his career.

“They didn’t let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP,” Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. “When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race… as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible.”

Saying that Palin was a “net negative” on the ticket, he went on: “[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with… He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that.” Read more

To John McCain: Beware What You Wish For Obama

John McCain must have committed his most costly mistake of the presidential campaign.

His most costly mistake is not that he has flip-flopped more substantially, and on more substantial issues, than Barack Obama. On that front, the scores are easily settled. Read more

Independent Run, if necessary — Country & its People more important than any Party — Creating a Party of the People to be Led by a Candidate of the People

Where do informed people of conscience regardless of age, race, economics, gender, sexual interest, religious affiliation, et cetera go if the election is “stolen” by Senator Clinton and the Superdelagates particularly if it is stolen by as person who is even more hawkish on war (Senator Clinton’s nuclear umbrella over the Middle East area) than even McCain? Read more

The Other Bold Speech that Obama Needs to Give to Make the Reverend Wright Controversy Go Away

The cruel irony about Jeremiah Wright is that Reverend Wright is the only person in America who can bring down Barack Obama, and he did. He is also the only person in America who could have “saved” Barack Obama. And he chose not to. In a previous article we published on Mach 16 shortly after the Wright controversy broke out, we had advised the Obama campaign about the urgency of holding a press conference and letting Obama make a historic speech that would ease the controversy and reassert him as the candidate of real change. We were happy to see that the Obama campaign did exactly what we had advocated, both in terms of the content of the sample speech we had provided, but also in terms of the form of it: he read the speech at a place of historic significance in Pennsylvania. While this speech did Obama great good in, indeed, easing the controversy, the ugly head of Wright has surfaced again, but this time with the kind of vengeance that is now threatening to lose Obama the nomination. Read more

Against All Odds: Why Barack Obama’s Incredible Achievement Must Be Lauded and Admired

The pundits and Clintonians who have chastised Barack Obama–the real underdog–for failing to wrap up the nomination against Hillary Clinton–the expected victor–always seem to forget one simple evidence: Barack Obama is not just any “normal” candidate in this race, he is a BLACK candidate. Read more

War of the “3AM Ads”: How Credible is Hillary Clinton in the White House at 3AM?

Ok, Hillary Clinton is at it again. On Friday, she launched a “3AM” ad that is reminiscent of a song by Nonchalant whose lyrics are asking the question: “5 o’clock in the morning, where you gonna be? – Outside on the corner.” Hillary’s new ad seems to pose the same question to voters, asking them to consider who would be a more credible Commander in Chief when it comes to answering that fatidic phone call at 3AM in the White House as children sleep unsafely in an unsafe world. Read more

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