That is, how many people will make up their minds based on things that the candidates cannot change from here on out to November? I don't mean politically, either. We're not talking about the voters who will vote party loyalty, but the ones who make up their minds based on other things.
This question keeps coming into my head as I read about the emotional draw of Barack Obama. If you look at the comments on this blog and others, a lot of his appeal is emotional. If you compare the candidates, McCain is clearly the centrist and is the only one of the two who has actually reached across the aisle for legislative compromises. Barack has voted against all of them. His claim to be a force for national reconciliation is strictly rhetorical.
After his recent victories Barack finally gave a substantive policy speech and his policies are all out of the far left playbook. The concrete embodiments of his offers of hope are nothing more than the creeping (sometimes galloping) socialism of the past.
In last night's debate, he revealed that his beautifully phrased calls for the restoration of our international image amount to treating every regime like our equals. He was not willing to put preconditions on sitting down and talking with anyone. Sitting with despots and filling the air with words is hardly new.
So that leaves me wondering just how much the debates will matter. What difference will it make if McCain makes the point that he's been the driving force behind the bipartisan agreements that Obama opposed? Will anyone care that McCain understands international relations and the implications of war better than most?
How much of the election has already been determined?
Update: Here's a corollary question: How much of Obama's support is strictly hatred of Hillary? Are the Democrats buying a pig in a poke? A little Googling revealed a fund raising letter from Michelle Obama defending partial-birth abortions. If stabbing infants in the backs of their heads with scissors and sucking their brains out isn't extremist and unpopular, I don't know what is. I doubt the primary voters looked that hard at Barack. Buyer's remorse, anyone?
4 comments:
You bring up a very good point. I think McCain needs to clearly and throughly present his positions. The clip of him saying another 100 years of war is damning without context. But I'm not sure he'll bother until he has the nomination. I think that might be a mistake. Rather than attacking Obama on his lack of experience, McCain should be illustrating what his experience can achieve, otherwise he just comes across as a cranky old man.
I think the risk is all Obama's. He's essentially got to hope he can cruise for the next 6 months without anyone looking at the fact that he has one of the most extremist voting records in the Senate. I think the McCain campaign will get this thing dialed in pretty quick.
If you go look at the articles in the MSM being linked at Real Clear Politics, there's a strong trend towards buyer's remorse with Obama.
The Dems going for Obama is funny as all get out, he's smarter than Kerry but otherwise another peacenik type lefty. Unelectable, you see. For all her ghastliness, Hillary is at least a credible politician. Though also unelectable but for different reasons, Bill being one of them.Between the juvenile sixties that they have yet to grow up from and the loss of Jack and Robert Kennedy, the Dems lost track of their history and what America is and they have yet to find their way back.
Maybe they're so far off the beaten track now, they never will. Lost souls wandering in a juvenile never never land.
Reasonable people can disagree over abortion and Roe v. Wade but the rabid defense of partial birth abortion as a line in the sand against further restrictions on abortion is unconscionable. The logic represents a dark, dark place in the human soul.
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