Sean Oxendine at The Next Right read Ron Brownstein’s “The Bush GOP’s Fatal Contraction” and, well, he just couldn’t stand to read any more such apocalyptic nonsense. Along the way in taking apart the former political reporter for The Los Angeles Times, Oxendine offers this observation about the 2008 presidential race:
The very important fact that he overlooks is that even with Sarah Palin and McCain’s supposed embrace of Bush’s economic and foreign policies, McCain was leading Obama before the financial collapse took place (and this was well outside the time of the regular convention bounce). Obama was reduced to making snarky comments about lipstick on pigs and old dead fish and running commercials about how McCain couldn’t send e-mails. He was getting ready to drop Keating 5 ads.
In other words, up until September 15, this was a very winnable race for Republicans. It wasn’t just at the Presidential level either — between the RNC and the financial collapse, every generic congressional ballot poll had the Democrats’ lead in single digits; we also had the first poll showing Republicans leading in the generic ballot since 2004. We were headed toward a three or four Senate seat loss, rather than the seven or eight one we’re looking at today. Given the overall condition of the country even pre-AIG/Lehman Brothers, that is astounding.
If McCain had pulled it off, and Obama had received only 49% of the vote and Democrats had made minimal gains in Congress or worse, the conclusion would be either (1) that Americans are racist or (2) that Democrats just can’t win the Presidency. Sorry, but the difference between a permanent Republican majority and a pup tent Republican party isn’t 4% of the vote.
In addition to the bottomline assessment of the ludicrousness of Brownstein’s prediction about the GOP’s future, Oxendine reminds us that there was a point in mid-September when the trendline looked like it was heading very much in a positive direction for the GOP. It’s easy enough to say now but in retrospect McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign in order to go back to Washington at the outset of the Wall Street economic crisis looks more and morer like one of the all-time biggest campaign mistakes.
