The Strategy to Win McCain the Election

Palin and McCain have found the strategy it looks like they are going to stick with. The "Don't Write Us Off" strategy. What they do is they go from state to state and say "we can still come back" or "it's not over yet" or "team X knows a little something about being an underdog" and then they compare Obama to a socialist and then leave for another state.

This is a stupid strategy.

There are less than 2 weeks until the election. You are not going to pick up 7-10 more points nationally by telling people that you are losing but hope to pick up votes. What McCain is doing is analogous to apologizing before a speech - "I'm sorry in advance if this speech sucks, I didn't have time to practice." He is making himself sound bad before he tries to excite people - and with that, with the exception of the socialism argument that hasn't seemed to hold much weight, he doesn't say anything to win over those 7-8% of voters. He is speaking directly to his supporters assuming that he is going to win over voters that are not in attendance at every one of these events.

He has very little left. Attack ads haven't worked. This socialism thing is stupid. Robocalls only served to alienate voters and trying to steal the message of "change" away from Barack Obama was never going to work, ever. It is time to give up - not on the campaign, but on these stupid strategies that were designed to appeal to the Bush parts of America.

McCain has one option left. The Republican strategy has always been to appeal to gullible people that will somehow believe that the Kerry swiftboat attacks were real, or that Obama is a Muslim, or that Hillary Clinton secretly had someone killed. It is the Sarah Palin strategy - be a good hockey mom that someone can have a beer with or buy a beer for and you will get people to think: "Awesome, this woman is just like me. She would make a perfect president because I would too!"

But this year, people are finally looking for something different - they are looking for someone to show that they can intelligently run this country. Someone that has actual, substantive, possibly even complicated plans to run this country. Someone that can understand complex things.

The only way McCain can win the election is if he starts running it how campaigns were meant to be run - as though he were intelligent. Explain specific, complicated plans - don't talk in ways that Joe the Belcher can understand, but show that you are not an unintelligent prick by laying out comprehensive plans for the country.

His last hope is to show people his actual plans for the country in all aspects of foreign and domestic policy. What Barack Obama does every day that seems to give him this "elitist" label is what McCain needs to do, otherwise he is wasting time and money.

John McCain should lose. Obama is a better candidate in every way. But McCain's best strategy is also the one that even many Barack Obama supporters want to see - because if McCain also finally starts providing a clear, intelligent message, it will be easier to have hope for the future country.