McCain's Concession

Do you realize, Michael, that the only thing that McCain ever *had* going for him was "a relatively modest crowd, hundreds of Republican activists," and you?

He parlayed that into a helluva run, didn't he?

I wish Senator McCain the best. I wish his running mate will go away forever. Let me tell you this. The Republicans have fostered free floating hatred throughut our country. Queers, pregnent women who wish to control their body, scientists who teach Darwinism, or who wish to research stem cell research, all of the regligious issues which are no different from the fundamentalist muslims who they direct mindless hatred toward, even our President is a muslim. Anyway, this free floating hatred is not what our country is about. As much as you may be devoted to your religion, please keep it to yourself.

Your comment is awaiting moderation. Story of my life here since Time went with this stupid thing. Whatever.

You say it but you don't mean it. Why do you always bother me? Why are you always on my back!pass4sure / 642-825 / 920-221 / 640-863 / MB2-633

One thing you people are going to have to get over is this notion that McCain somehow ran into bad breaks. In your article, you make it seem like the immigration debate and the financial crisis the U.S. is facing appeared out of thin air.
They are Republicanism.
To pretend like Republican xenophobia and deregulation blowing up in their face was some act of God is pure journalistic malfeasance. Write this story when a freak asteroid strike wipes out Texas and all its electoral votes and I might have a little sympathy for your argument. But to say that it is "bad luck" that caused Republicans to be loathed by much of America is ignorant.

Moderation, please go, fuck youself. Sorry, KT, my potty mouth got the better of me.

Yeah, pafro. Since moderation doesn't allow me to post my own comments, I will go with fellow travelers. Go man.

McCain has tried to do the right thing only after doing very wrong things for months. The tone of his campaign gave permission to, and even encouraged, the reaction of the crowd and of the single ragehead. The boos and the curses arew foreseeable and unavoidable consequences of the division and negativity McCain chose as his campaign theme.

I suppose one can commend McCain for his tone tonight, but in reality that tone falls far short of a remedy for the serious harm he and his forces have generated and aggravated. The country McCain purported to put first has a more difficult path due to his ambition.

I changed my mind. Let's hear it.pass4sure / 70-297 / 642-825 / 642-503 / ex0-101

It was a classy speech.
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Also, I second what pafro said. And what FlownOver said.

It was a cl@ssy speech.
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Also, I second what pafro said. And what FlownOver said.
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(Yeah, this took me two tries, apparently you can't just go around saing "cl@ssy" without the @, otherwise people might find out where all that poop's coming from.)

I'd like to have some sympathy for Grumpy, but I can't. Reap/sow/kthxbi.

Since my last post was modded on another thread, might as well try again here (sigh):

Enjoyed:
-Obama
-The fact that "44" can read as "4+4=8", of which "8" is a sainted number at least in Asian circles.
-Hagan's win
-my bottle of malbec
-McCain FINALLY telling the hooting scum amongst his audience to pipe down (but only when you have nothing left to lose, right Johnny? Right.)
-Karl Rove whining on Faux Noise: "We're in trouble. We're in trouble."

Did not enjoy:
-Don Young's win
-Prop 8 in Cali passing
-Tweety's ability to grate on Eugene's and mine's nerves
-It's Pat insisting the economy is what did McCain in (old habits die hard, eh Pat)
-Shrek still pimpin' (Seriously dude, the ship sank. What's it like underwater, any cool fishies?)

I think it was a noble effort on McCain's part but after the past few months I can't help but read between the lines when he's talking about what an important election this has been. Maybe I've been brainwashed, maybe I'm too firmly in the tank for Obama... whatever it is, I couldn't help but wince at several things he said even if his sincerity occasionally made an appearance. His crowd didn't help matters any either.

And Michael - congratulations on outlasting the election! I know this has been a tough crowd for you but as a longtime lurker I just wanted to let you know that I appreciated listening to your voice from the other side of the aisle.

Hey, if Mac wants to play along on immigration and climate change, welcome to Barack's party. Short of 60 and not so secretly hoping Lieberman's redacted, we'll need as many moderates as we can get, if any are left in the GOP's shrinking tent.

In victory, it's possible to be magnanimous. With the exception of our beloved Michael, the apologist fan-boy. Your rehabilitation, sir, will prove long and arduous.

McCain did the right thing. Whether you choose to qualify it with your interpretation of his tactics over the past month or so, or whether you take it at basically face value like me, the color of lens used does not change the fact that he stepped to the podium and said exactly what needed to be said.

"The lawn at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa never filled to capacity. A space that might have held 2,000 or more stood about one quarter empty. And many of those present took poorly to McCain's praise of Obama's achievement. They booed at times, and one loud man swore at the stage, evoking the excretions of various farm animals"
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The republicans took the high road from the start to the end. That is why they did so well.

When you deal in hate you get the cards you deserve. Nice speech at the end for McCain, but the audience's reactions said everything one needs to know about the Republican Party. It is the party of hate and division.

The Republican party has branded themselves as the Party of Joe the Plumber. Ingnorant, uneducated people who have trouble expressing themselves.... who live in a dream world that they too can make $250,000 a year if they just vote Republican. People who have little regard for the truth, who praise the unlicensed and unethical people who avoid paying their taxes and hospital bills as their heroes. Sarah Palin will be a wonderful standard bearer for the Republican Party in 2012 because she too has all the fine qualities of Joe the Plumber and her party's faithful.

McCain's speech was gracious, but the reaction of many of his supporters, not so much.

I thought Mike Murphy's comments on MSNBC about Obama running like a Democrat and getting the vote mix of a Democrat (but with a better turnout and a slightly higher pull of important white demographics -- much higher in the case of college educated whites) was very sharp and important to emphasize. I thought a lot of the TV commentary got too wrapped up in the importance of the racial element as a political component (as opposed to the historical and emotional component we should attach to the accomplishment, which is very real and which brings tears to my eyes) -- Obama ran like a Democrat and won like a Democrat. Murphy made this point well and it's a point that no one else was really making.

One thing I'd like to see is for someone to show Pat Buchanan the electoral map from yesterday and ask him to talk about the Nixon Southern Strategy and its consequences. (by the way, Rove called the map pretty well)

One thing I am hopeful about is that a lot of the reasons people gave for voting against Obama -- he's a socialist, he's not one of us -- are clearly untrue, and hopefully Obama can reverse some of these ridiculous rationales.

# yoshiattack Says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 3:44 am
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McCain did the right thing. Whether you choose to qualify it with your interpretation of his tactics over the past month or so, or whether you take it at basically face value like me, the color of lens used does not change the fact that he stepped to the podium and said exactly what needed to be said.
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Good point, Yoshi. I'll grant you that he stood there and mouthed the words. Nice piece of theater. But the problem is, as others alluded to, the lizard-brain reaction of (some of) his supporters. Yes, McCain can't control those individual jerks with no class, but to a large extent, he is 100% responsible for those boos and jeers and cries of male bovine excrement. After the all the race-baiting and fear-mongering and McCarthy-esque characterizations of Obama as not only a casual acquaintance, but as an actual intimate of terrorists and socialists alike, it's no surprise that some of McCain's supporters couldn't stop and accept reality. It made me feel even angrier towards McCain - for a few minutes. I'm over it (like it matters) but it just underscored how pathetic his entire candidacy won. To hear McCain and the Schmidts and Salters and Davises of his staff talking about how they didn't know how they could have run the race any better or what else they could have done was insulting to every American voter with a modicum of intelligence.
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Good riddance to the McCain presidential campaign, and may we please have the supposedly "real" McCain back in the Senate, now?

newfloridian:

Enough with your stereotypes. Was it disappointing that some of the supporters at the McCain speech booed? Yes. Were they the majority of those in attendance? No. Do they represent the majority of Republicans who voted for McCain? No. Certainly not the ones I know.
The biggest hurdle Obama has to becoming a truly great president (something this selfish, unpatriotic republican thinks he has the potential to be) are extremists in his own party, like yourself, who demand their pound of flesh and want to continue the division. Please check your memory card and remember Hillary Clinton's campaign and, for that matter, the Clinton presidency -- marked by division, rancor and partisanship (and in the case of Hillary's campaign -- racisism)

Obama has the discipline and the temperment, in all things, that Clinton never had. If he truly means to govern in a way that benefits all americans, he will move to the center, as Bill Clinton did, and america will once again move forward. If he allows his big money donors and the far left wing of his party to co-opt his presidency, he will struggle. I hope and pray for the former.

Michael,
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We pounded you into the ground on this blog. Some of us even gave up on you. But you never gave up on us

dancingoutlaw -- the GOP talking points and claims about Obama that newfloridian mentions are the ones I heard incessantly from McCain, Palin (from her, squared) and their minions. There are important and difficult national issues that have to be dealt with in a collaborative way, but I think you are running away from the campaign the GOP tried to win with (and rather arrogantly trying to dictate to the winner how he should govern if he is to make you and your confederates (pun intended) happy).

It may be that what seems to be the center has moved. you might need to move with it.

I see I'm later to the party and what I feel needs to be said has already been tackled but here goes. McCains' experience on the lawn there was exactyly a case of reaping what he sowed. He was exceedingly gracious and except for the fact that in my view he overemphasized the significance of Obama's race, he spoke very well with a message that his supporters needed to hear. Unfortunately the message he had was utterly foreign to his supporters and it showed loudly and clearly in the crowd's reaction.

I'm still convinced that if he had run half as honorable a campaign as he said he intended to and that his fans (Michael...) insisted against all evidence that he was doing, he could have won. Every drop in the polls that he experienced was directly related to some tactical move designed to appeal to the Hate-R-Us right at the expense of the "please don't raise my taxes" Center.

Even more important than my satisfaction of knowing that Barack Obama will be the next President, is my satisfaction of knowing that campaigning on the assupmtion that only 30% of Americans are real Americans and that patriotism is reserved for a small subset of our nation's citizens ios an exercise in self destruction.

I see I'm later to the party and what I feel needs to be said has already been tackled but here goes. McCains' experience on the lawn there was exactyly a case of reaping what he sowed. He was exceedingly gracious and except for the fact that in my view he overemphasized the significance of Obama's race, he spoke very well with a message that his supporters needed to hear. Unfortunately the message he had was utterly foreign to his supporters and it showed loudly and clearly in the crowd's reaction.

I'm still convinced that if he had run half as honorable a campaign as he said he intended to and that his fans (Michael...) insisted against all evidence that he was doing, he could have won. Every drop in the polls that he experienced was directly related to some tactical move designed to appeal to the Hate-R-Us right at the expense of the "please don't raise my taxes" Center.

Even more important than my satisfaction of knowing that Barack Obama will be the next President, is my satisfaction of knowing that campaigning on the a$$upmtion that only 30% of Americans are real Americans and that patriotism is reserved for a small subset of our nation's citizens is an exercise in self destruction