Legal Commentary

McCain = Bush's Third Term

By Big Tent Democrat

One of my major frustrations with the tack taken by Obama supporters in the blogs and the Media last week (the obsession with Sarah Palin, both on issues and the personal) was that it lost the most important political narrative coming out of the Democratic Convention - that John McCain represents George Bush's Third Term. To its credit, the Obama campaign fought hard to keep that narrative going, not getting caught in the Palin cul-de-sac.

For the most part, I am happy to see that Obama supporters in the Media and the blogs have come to realize that focusing on Sarah Palin is a self defeating approach (Palin became a standard for the GOP base to rally behind, performed extremely well in her speech and was perceived as unfairly attacked by many, if not most, Americans). This focus underlined the experience issue, an Obama weakness. But George Bush still seems an afterthought. For example, Ezra Klein writes:

[T]onight's speech was all about [McCain.] The policies are his qualities, the vision is his story, the vice president is his understudy. . . . When you stepped outside of McCain, however, there was very little to the speech. Over the course of nearly an hour, he managed to detail exactly three policies. Taxes, which he will push lower. Education, which he will make more competitive. And high energy costs, which he will solve with a drill and a dream. Where policies would ordinarily have gone, McCain instead substituted qualities. He's a fighter, he said. He's a patriot.

Indeed. Because John McCain is running for George Bush's Third Term, but can not say so. That is why Democrats must say so and CAN say so. It should be the central Democratic message of the next two months.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 05, 2008 (boomark / email).