The Convention Blog

It was given the number of groups lined up to  take him up on the offer. Conservatives would like to, Obama wants to and the protest groups literally did fight this week. McCain did the job that needed to be done even if Conservatives didn’t like it nearly as much as they did with Sarah Palin the night before. The bus ride home was more one of quiet resignation than it was of the celebration that had taken place the night before. McCain stayed within the core Conservative brand, hammered Obama on taxes and energy, talked about security and claimed to be the change candidate. The speech was an odd fusion of Clinton ‘92 and Reagan/GW Bush. All in all, it did what it had to do. This Convention, on the other hand, well may not have because of bad luck and bad choices on McCain’s part. The bad choices involve speaking lineups on national television and the decision to go after the media the other night, as well as to have Sarah Palin go after Obama on the same night. So far what we know about her is that she can give a good speech, she can attack Obama and she likes hockey and killing moose. The joke should have been that the Republican Convention was sponsored by the NHL. Nothing funnier than a bunch of Southerners and Washington insiders, many of whom have never been on skates in their lives, praising the game’s virtues. The Convention as a whole showed the demographic problems Republicans have and this is part of their problem: there are a lot of middle aged white people around but not enough anymore to assure a win, especially not if the other guys are out there organizing first time voters and younger people. Simply put, a large youth turnout this year elects Obama, anything else then it depends on which demographics turnout. Obama needs the youth vote too because, while it is easy to say he is encountering problems because of its skin color, the harder, more accurate reason for these problems has more to do with his personal experience and his policy choices. A lot of people like Obama, the problem is that most of the policies that he is advocated are the same things that the Democrats have been talking about for decades. You can see this when McCain hammered away on energy and taxes. Both are big concerns with the groups that McCain is hoping to mobilize because 1) they recall the miserable Carter years, 2) Obama is still too vague on his tax plan for a good chunk of undecideds especially in big, expensive, real estate markets, 3) Obama’s energy policy isn’t about energy, it is about global warming and that is obvious when people look at both it and its endorsements. This opens the door for McCain, especially if he makes Conservatives gag a little bit about having him at the top of their party’s ticket. It reminds them that Reagan is dead and, in a lot of ways, so is the movement that he led. The idea that McCain actually got this nomination, as well as the age of many of the Republican identifiers shows this. The Republicans used to be the party that mobilized young voters and won elections but not so much anymore. This party has demographic and age problems that it will have to deal with in the aftermath of this election regardless of the outcome.

This convention will probably not do for McCain what the DNC did for Obama. It wasn’t as big of a spectacle, it featured the most unpopular president in history, a lot of bad luck and a lot of talk about issues that make Conservatives happy but repluse swing voters. McCain’s VP choice, on the other hand, offset a lot of that because talk of her sucked the oxygen out of these other topics. Either way, this election is not decided. John McCain and Barack Obama are excellent candidates who have run excellent campaigns and now the sixty day sprint to the end begins……