Why Obama Won – part 2
Author: Hoger
Today, the second part of my analysis of the Obama win.
Age and race as indicators of change
Americans were in the mood for change. Obama’s age and race provided an immediately obvious difference to crystallize on, even before people started comparing policies. He was a generation removed from Bush, from McCain and from the Clintons.
Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, and 40 years after Ali was stripped of the world heavyweight title for refusing to go to Vietnam an African-American was elected president of the United States. The symbolism was magnificent.
But while African-American turnout was good, it was also strong across most demographics. People wanted to vote. His race or age weren’t responsible for him being elected but they were both a lightning rod for the change that had happened in America and the change he was proposing. They helped people focus.
The Palin Gambit and other McCain errors
The choice of Sarah Palin was illustrative of a number of serious tactical errors the McCain camp made during the campaign. Denied his supposed first choice of independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman, McCain chose the Alaskan governor to appeal to the Republican base and Democratic women put off by the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primaries. But the two-for-one Palin deal only delivered on half of the bargain and it wasn’t the half they needed. Somewhere along the way the Republicans forgot that the Democratic women who were supporting Clinton so strongly were a generation older than Palin. The fact she was a woman didn’t matter – she was too young to have fought the battles their generation had fought. They didn’t like her politics and weren’t going to do her any favours.
The Palin gambit also meant McCain gave up one of his best tactical advantages over Obama – the experience card. No longer could McCain level the argument that Obama lacked experience because his choice for Vice President was clearly even worse. It was one of the worst own-goals in recent political history.
For large parts of the campaign it seemed like McCain just couldn’t catch a break., McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign amid the growing economic crisis wasn’t entirely flawed. But to pay off it needed his party to at least pretend to look to him as a leader and not vote the original stimulus package (whatever you think of it) down and blame Nancy Pelosi for being too nasty.
His decision to go so negative so soon was another flaw. McCain should have spent the last three weeks of the campaign telling American families why he thought Obama’s tax plan would be bad for them. But no, instead he mixed his messages with hyped-up negatives that only appealed to his base.
