One name: Sarah Palin
There will be volumes written about this election, and mulitple theories about why McCain lost and/or why Obama won.
Obama, as a black man, had to overcome some hurdles that a white candidate would not. And he seems to have cleared them.
But that isn't why McCain is losing. There are a number of reasons McCain looks bad right now including his erratic message on the economy, his negativity, the obviousness of his age and the fact that he is a Republican.
But all of those do not add up to the one thing that caused the public to turn against McCain. That one thing was the choice of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential candidate.
Republicans point to how she "fired up the base," which only indicates to me that the Republican base is missing a few IQ points, but she has not helped with independents and moderate Republicans, as we can see in the recent polls. Independents and moderate Republicans want more than a pretty face and a nice set of legs and a hairdo that changes as often as that of a Hollywood starlet.
Serious voters wanted McCain to choose a serious candidate to be the vice presidential nominee and he didn't. He chose an air-head who can read a teleprompter and deliver a vicious soundbite. He did not choose someone who is qualified to be president.
In a more prosperous and less dangerous time, an airhead vice president might have worked. But these are not those times.
Furthermore, we just spent eight years with an airhead president. George W. Bush has been the most anti-intellectual, uncurious, unwise president in our history. His lack of knowledge, and adherence to failed conservative ideology, has brought disaster after disaster to our nation and the people are not willing to go there again.
George W. Bush is not smart enough to be president, yet he has been president for eight years because of some clever marketing and a few unsavory campaign tactics. We are now suffering the terrible consequences of having been hoodwinked. Once the public got to know a little (very little) about Sarah Palin, it didn't take long for them to see that, like Bush, she doesn't have the intelligence to be president. And the right wing pundits' attempt to compare her favorably to Obama, whose intelligence is in the superior range, or to say she understands complex issues better than McCain or Obama, is ludicrous. I don't know how they say it with a straight face.
The American people don't want another failed war, more dead soldiers, more terrorist attacks, more Katrinas, and an ongoing economic recession, or even depression. They want someone smart enough to handle the multiple problems that land on the president's desk. They want someone with a brain.
Sarah Palin is a candidate of very little brain. The public sees this and doesn't want to go there again. And that the 72 year old McCain would choose her and continue to say how talented she is gives us an indication that he is a man of very little brain as well. The American people have seen throught the bullshit and won't choose another mental lightweight in a time when great wisdom is needed.
And that's why McCain will lose.
