Posted by CB on November 05, 2008 at 17:08:06
In Reply to: Re: Losing graciously posted by sawyer on November 05, 2008 at 15:31:39:
I was deeply impressed by John McCain's concession speech last night. That was the John McCain I know and love, and voted for in the '00 primary. For all the criticism of McCain's "going negative" in the latter part of his campaign, I think he kept things relatively clean compared to what we saw in '00 and '04 from Karl Rove & the Bush campaign. I would not have been very disappointed if McCain had won.
I don't think it's fair to compare the 2000 and 2004 elections to 2008 for several reasons. There was not a clear majority in the latter two elections. We're talking about a difference of a few thousand votes in both '00 and '04. There was a clear majority in '08, with a difference of many hundred thousand votes in many states. Not a landslide or mandate, but a clear majority.
However, even with the narrow margin of victory he pulled off in '04, the winner that year was not exactly gracious, either. What mandate did the voters give the president-elect in '04? That is exactly what the winner announced after he won by a mere 300,000 votes in a state where there was evidence of voter suppression and a bitterly hurtful manipulation of voter turnout with the hateful & divisive Issue One.
There was a much deeper polarization of the electorate in 2000 and 2004 as reflected by the hanging chads and the 49/51 split in the votes. Anyone who was in Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004 knows there were some very ugly things that went on with getting out the vote and/or making sure it didn't get out. It's rather difficult to be gracious loser when your perception is one of getting swift-boated or having the election decided by a partisan majority of the Supreme Court. So what dirty tricks and/or character assasination did McCain need to get over in order to graciously concede?
As far as criticizing Obama is concerned, he's getting a very short honeymoon for my vote. He better be serious about bipartisanship, because there's no way we're going to solve our national problems without working together. Divided we fail.