October 6th 2008
Defeat Advice From The Man Who Led Hillary To Defeat
H
oward Wolfson, captain of the sunk Clinton campaign, is looking at the post-meltdown playing field and declaring the winner in November:
“John McCain’s candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill. Like those once vibrant institutions, McCain’s collapse was stunning and quick. One minute you are a well-respected brand. The next you are yelling at the messengers of your demise as all around you the numbers start blinking red and stop adding up.”
Before the Wall Street collapse, Wolfson writes, “Senator McCain was ahead.” But today, “an election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters.”
If I were leading the Obama campaign, I would blanket the airwaves between now and November 4 with an ad showing McCain stupidly admitting that he really doesn’t understand economics. Over and over and over again. With signs all over the place that the economy was fragile, it was a foolishly risky thing to say, and it will haunt him now, especially since his suspension of his campaign was not followed by visible leadership or newfound understanding.
Palin’s economic strength comes from dealing with good times, not bad. She made sure her constituents’ interests were met as oil prices soared, which was a fine thing to do, but it’s tough to see its applicability here (outside of corruption-fighting, which I’ll get to in a minute).
So, is Wolfson right? We’ll know in November, but for now let’s just say he’s being simplistic and optimistic. Obama is riding a perception wave; he has done nothing to deal with the economy except say with hyptnotic phrasing and emphasis that something needs to be done and the Republicans can’t be trusted to do it.
The reality is that the Dems can’t be trusted to do it. Their hands are the dirtiest, and Obama’s are among the dirtiest of the bunch. In my earlier post today, I say that McCain needs to step up his attacks on Obama’s judgment (Ayres, Wright, the New Party) and his utterly non-maverick association with the economic crooks and meltdown mavens (Rezko, Raines, Johnson).
And most importantly, to prove his maverick standing - which is the only thing that will save him now, since no one’s really trusting any insiders too much - McCain is going to have to assemble a maverick economic team and come up with a recovery plan that punishes the perps, recovers our “investment” in failing enterprises, and protects us from this ever happening again.
The last couple of weeks have been a sea of icebergs for McCain’s Titanic, but Wolfson is too much the cheerleader who’s all excited in the third quarter; there is still time to win. All it takes is McCain being a maverick instead of talking about being a maverick, and landing a few solid blows to Obama’s chin. One punch was thrown yesterday, with the demand for an investigation of Obama’s fundraising; more need to follow.
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