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roachboy · 11-05-2008, 07:23 PM

what did the republicans do wrong in the context of the mc-cain campaign?
depends on what you thought a good outcome was: as it turned out, they did everything right.

actually, many of the problems the campaign faced were not exactly of their own making--boxed in by the coalition and language that enabled them to exercise power since the reagan period; boxed in by the actions of the bush administration and all the more by the loss of traction that the bush-brand experienced after 2005; boxed in at the last minute by the consequences of the economic ideology that the campaign had no choice but retain because of the first problem...

the campaign itself went to hell early. once mc-cain had the nomination, he should have run to his actual political positions rather than becoming a pantomime hard rightwinger. once the schmidt squad took over, it seemed like Mister Leadership was being bossed around by his own campaign team. palin may have made sense had mc-cain himself been running more centre, but he wasn't. the decision to run at the far right base indicated that the campaign imagined that, in the end, the election would come down to machine vs machine and that they could get the bodies out. this was an obvious miscalculation.

the financial situation did not help, but the campaign managed to set up a photo op in the context of which mc-cain came off as the kind of "leader" who has no particular ideas but who feels the need to lurch into situation after situation and REACT. it's a sad state of affairs they engineered.

running an amateur copy of a rove campaign was stupid. it seems to me that the explanation for that lay in the language the conservative coalition used to talk to itself, the old conservative identity politics thing, which meant (in tandem with everything else) that the campaign did not seem to have any actual ideas to offer, merely an endless positioning game (NOT ONE OF US, NOT ONE OF US)--you know the drill---obama is not a citizen (NOT ONE OF US), he's a "socialist" (NOT ONE OF US), a "terrorist" (NOT ONE OF US)---you can't run a campaign based on this level of stupidity and imagine that you're talking to anyone but the base. this because these are not arguments--they're about drawing a line around the base, encouraging the base to draw a line around itself. this is inside. this is outside. that is not an argument. any territorial animal does that.

but none of this is anything "wrong" in the sense that the mc-cain campaign played the shitty hand that was dealt them in a way that was entirely hamstrung by the accumulated past that conditioned the game for the right.

that's why the republicans now find themselves entering a long march across the desert.

personally, i think the right should dump the entire language of conservative identity politics and make actual arguments about their positions, appealing to what folk might think rather than appealing to some fiction as to who they are.

all in all, i'm glad i wasn't a political consultant who was hired to try to play the hand of shit the republicans had to work with.

11-05-2008, 07:23 PM	#11 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	what did the republicans do wrong in the context of the mc-cain campaign? depends on what you thought a good outcome was: as it turned out, they did everything right. actually, many of the problems the campaign faced were not exactly of their own making--boxed in by the coalition and language that enabled them to exercise power since the reagan period; boxed in by the actions of the bush administration and all the more by the loss of traction that the bush-brand experienced after 2005; boxed in at the last minute by the consequences of the economic ideology that the campaign had no choice but retain because of the first problem... the campaign itself went to hell early. once mc-cain had the nomination, he should have run to his actual political positions rather than becoming a pantomime hard rightwinger. once the schmidt squad took over, it seemed like Mister Leadership was being bossed around by his own campaign team. palin may have made sense had mc-cain himself been running more centre, but he wasn't. the decision to run at the far right base indicated that the campaign imagined that, in the end, the election would come down to machine vs machine and that they could get the bodies out. this was an obvious miscalculation. the financial situation did not help, but the campaign managed to set up a photo op in the context of which mc-cain came off as the kind of "leader" who has no particular ideas but who feels the need to lurch into situation after situation and REACT. it's a sad state of affairs they engineered. running an amateur copy of a rove campaign was stupid. it seems to me that the explanation for that lay in the language the conservative coalition used to talk to itself, the old conservative identity politics thing, which meant (in tandem with everything else) that the campaign did not seem to have any actual ideas to offer, merely an endless positioning game (NOT ONE OF US, NOT ONE OF US)--you know the drill---obama is not a citizen (NOT ONE OF US), he's a "socialist" (NOT ONE OF US), a "terrorist" (NOT ONE OF US)---you can't run a campaign based on this level of stupidity and imagine that you're talking to anyone but the base. this because these are not arguments--they're about drawing a line around the base, encouraging the base to draw a line around itself. this is inside. this is outside. that is not an argument. any territorial animal does that. but none of this is anything "wrong" in the sense that the mc-cain campaign played the shitty hand that was dealt them in a way that was entirely hamstrung by the accumulated past that conditioned the game for the right. that's why the republicans now find themselves entering a long march across the desert. personally, i think the right should dump the entire language of conservative identity politics and make actual arguments about their positions, appealing to what folk might think rather than appealing to some fiction as to who they are. all in all, i'm glad i wasn't a political consultant who was hired to try to play the hand of shit the republicans had to work with. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-05-2008 at 07:26 PM..