Thursday, November 6, 2008

Don't Bring Me Down

Now that the election is over the blame games starts. In fact, it started before the actual vote. So, why did the Republicans do so badly. A major part was the economy, but it was not all of the problem. The economy gave John McCain an uphill battle to fight, but I feel he could still have won. Why do I say that? Well, as a social Democrat and economic Republican, I might have voted for John McCain if he did a few things differently. The most important of which was for him to be himself.

So, what are the things that made me strongly go for Barack Obama. First off, John McCain changed from the person he was eight years ago. I was hoping he only changed to get the nomination, but events indicated otherwise. Then, he went and picked Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin might be a good candidate sometime in the future, but she obviously just was not ready. She energized the Republican base, but she turned off independants and conservative Democrats. When John McCain's VP choice was announced, I told my wife that he just gave the election to the Demacrats.

Why did I think that? For the most part, it meant to me that John McCain had really changed from what he was in 2000. That John McCain would have not picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. It meant I could not really trust him to be that common sense maverick that he had been for so many year.

There were other things that bothered me later on, but the Palin pick was a big one. I won't spend to much time on other things that just reinforced my belief that John McCain was different. John McCain did not handle the economic meltdown well. This includes his "the fundementals are sound" comments and his handling of the bailout. The final straw was when he stopped talking about real issues and just started talking about how bad a person his opponent was.

Overall, John McCain might have won if he only was himself. Sarah Palin was only a symptom of that problem.