How McCain can win

Timothy McNulty | October 7, 2008

Amid all the talk lately about the McCain camp's shift into attack mode and its dropping poll numbers, the fact remains that there is still a month left in this election, and given how crazy it's been thus far, anything can happen by Nov. 4. There are a few voices among the din saying how McCain can do it.

From Next Right, a "non-Ayers, non-Wright strategy for McCain":

The Keating attack is actually an opportunity to drive home McCain's sense of self-sacrifice. Though McCain was cleared of wrongdoing, he can make the point that this is what drove him to become a political reformer and a thorn in the side of his fellow Republicans. Told right, this story of redemption could break the dials tomorrow night. It also fits into the broader frame of service vs. selfishness. Obama thinks only about himself, and didn't change his ways when a greedy real estate developer sought to buy him off. McCain had an awakening when the same thing happened to him.

The Ayers stuff will be useful in solidifying the base and getting Obama's unfavorables to 40. But it's not a gamechanger. A casualty of McCain's months-long delay in going on offense is that he's had to debut his harshest material in October rather than road-testing it over the summer. In this sense, throwing in the kitchen sink now looks desperate and reactive, even though it was probably inevitable. Still, it would have been far better had McCain given his campaign license to launch these attacks at a time and place of its choosing, rather than having events force his hand.

From Politico:

Whit Ayres is a pollster and consultant who worked on Lamar Alexander's 1996 presidential campaign and in numerous Senate and gubernatorial races. He is an expert on Southern politics.

"Anybody who is talking about a race being over a month out has not been participating in very many campaigns," Ayres said. "Of course McCain can win it. Of course he can.

"He needs to broaden the discussion to dimensions that voters consistently see as relevant to their presidential choice. Voters vote on issues, particularly on the economy, but they also vote on character, leadership, values and ideology. And quite rightly so. A president for the next four years will be dealing with a whole host of issues beyond the economy, and how he deals with those issues is very relevant to the discussion.

"The Obama-Biden ticket is the most liberal ticket the Democrats have offered America since George McGovern in 1972. Barack Obama is far more liberal than most Americans. Moreover, a politician's associations are a window into his values. If John McCain liked to hang around with the Ku Klux Klan, and if his church had given a lifetime achievement award to racist David Duke, all of us would consider those legitimate areas of inquiry.