October 7, 2008
Four weeks out from the most important election of our lifetime and we are starting to see the clear delineation between the two campaigns. Team Obama is looking more and more presidential with each passing day and staying on the topics that matter the most to the American people. Team McFailin has resorted to fear mongering and lunacy with the vague hope that if enough slime is thrown against the wall that something might stick in the minds of the voters. But this is not 2000, when the people could be easily distracted by the politics of personal destruction. This is 2008 and the American people are not going to fall for it this time. There is too much wrong in this country for the desperation and mud to matter in the lives of those hurting in America.
The past week has seen the McFailin campaign stoop to lower and lower levels in their desperate attempts to steer the national debate away from the pathetic economy and onto smear tactics. His pet barracuda, Sarah Palin, has been beating the William Ayers drumbeat all week, trying to associate Obama with the former Weather Underground member. This matter has been fully vetted during the primaries and correctly dismissed. When Ayers was active in the Underground, Barack Obama was eight years old. It wasn’t until decades later that they served on the same board; hardly making them “palling around” as McFailin would have us believe. Ayers was also never convicted of crimes and is now a distinguished professor at an American college. Even if you wish to find his previous anti-government activities, during the height of the Viet Nam War, offensive; just remember that Barack Obama was eight years old. The entire story has no legs and rightfully so. What is so brazen about this is that Palin herself is married to someone who was part of a radical organization that hated the United States and wanted to secede from the union. But Obama need not go there because the people simply do not care anymore about the politics of distraction. The same goes for Team McFailin’s continued attempts to dredge back up the Pastor Wright nonsense. Never mind that there are videos out there with Palin associating with pastors who threaten their congregations with eternal damnation based upon their vote and one that has Sarah herself asking for prayer for a 30-billion dollar pipeline deal, which she described as “God’s will.”
These desperate tactics are not working this time for McFailin. The American people do not have the luxury of diving into the mire with John and Sarah. They are too busy being worried about their mortgages, their jobs and their healthcare. So that was how the stage was set going into the second debate tonight. McCain continued the strange strategy of complaining about the state of affairs in Washington, of which he has fully supported and is responsible for. McCain complains about out of control spending when he has voted for the Bush budgets four of five times. He complains about earmarking when his running mate was the Alaskan Queen of earmarks. On taxes, McCain tried again desperately to disguise the fact that he intends to continue to disastrous Bush tax policies. He claims “let’s not raise taxes on anyone!” Obama simply responds that people who make more than $250,000 per year need to expect to pay more. Obama is right and no matter how much McCain tried to lie about it again, he was again corrected.
McCain was still sputtering out the usual talking points tonight. While he made eye contact this time with Obama, he was still full of utter disdain and at one point he even referred to him as “that one.” He had a new gimmicky idea to buy up all the failed mortgages, which they claim will cost another 300 billion dollars on top of the recent 700 billion dollar bailout. But all the bailout schemes McFailin proposes will not change the fact of who John McCain is. He kept claiming tonight that he wants voters to look at his record and I hope they take him up on his plea. He has a record of being a staunch deregulator. It is that deregulation that is a huge part of what led to this mess we are in now economically. He has a record of voting 90% of the time with President Bush and his proposed tax policies are nothing more than a continuation of the last eight years. And let us not lose sight of the fact that it was not just deregulation that has caused this mess. Deregulation has crippled the market and the economy of the rich. The economy for the rest of us had already been wrecked through eight years of tax breaks for the rich while operating wars on two fronts. McCain has a record of joking about a nuclear attack on Iran. He has a record of overselling the Iraq War as being easy and cheap.
Please check the record. John McCain represents more of the same. Nothing but McSame. Nothing but McBush. As we head into the last four weeks and the last debate, remember that you will continue to hear his attack pit-bull Palin talk about someone who was a domestic terrorist 40 years ago instead of talking about your futures. You will continue to see nothing but desperation and mud. That is all they have left. Because when they focus on the issues they lose. When they focus on the economy, they cannot escape the fact that McCain was part of the problem and his solution is to simply continue the same policies. When they focus on foreign policy, they have to sell the notion that 12 billion per month in Iraq, while the Iraqis sit on 80 billion in oil profits, is good for America. The country does not care about the silly surge talking points anymore. They have moved past it. When they focus on healthcare, McCain is left with his failed policy offering of a 5K credit to buy 12K worth of insurance. When all you have left to sell is failed policies you have to turn to something else to distract the electorate. Desperation and mud. That is all that Team McFailin has left.
