On a night when John McCain locked up the Republican nomination for President of the United States, the Democrats continued to spar back and forth in “Fight Night to the White House 2008™”.

Just when Barack Obama had Hillary Clinton against the ropes, he failed to finish her off. Maybe Clinton was pulling a “rope-a-dope”, but backed once more into a corner this was do or die for the Clinton campaign. Obama had won 12 straight states (including Vermont) until Rhode Island, which ended up being just the tip of the iceberg. The Clinton camp put all their time, energy, and money into Texas and Ohio…and it worked.

Obama outspent Clinton almost 2 to 1 in advertising in Texas and Ohio but still got handed a defeat in both states. I guess the Obama camp did not learn from the past mistakes by once upon a candidate Mitt Romney. Both of them found out the hard way (like Obama) that outspending opponents in television ads doesn’t necessarily correlate to an electoral romp of a state.

Perhaps there is such a thing as too much television advertisements. I guess when you see five Obama ads in one hour of Judge Judy, it kind of makes you sick (not to mention the fact that too much Judge Judy makes you hate life). There are ill feelings all around when you see a candidate everywhere. If I was a campaign manager I was surely analyze the effects of television ads on the voting population.

Whatever Clinton did in Ohio and Texas that worked, she needs to keep doing it. Maybe it was the way she attacked Obama or maybe it was the continuing talk of experience…Alright stop right there.

I want to get this straightened out right now. Clinton claims to have 35 years of experience. In what? She is 60 (going on 61), with 35 years of experience she started experiencing things when she was 25 (I started a little earlier). Does America really believe she’s that experienced? One of the CNN commentators made some very good points about her experience level and how much she was actually involved with foreign diplomacy within Bill Clinton’s White House. Not only in diplomacy, but in decisions of military deployment (see: Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq). She claims to be ready on Day One to handle anything because of her experience, but does First Lady count as experience? If Laura Bush tried to run, would she be considered more experienced then let’s say Obama? I hope not. Really what did Hillary Clinton do that was such an experience? Maybe she talked to some world leaders (this I do not doubt), but her biggest project as First Lady was to restructure the healthcare system, which as we all know failed miserably. She had a Plan A, but once that got shot down by a Republican Congress there was no alternative (sounds a little like our original Iraq strategy).

Sorry, I’m back. Let’s talk about the Republicans. Not much to talk about here. Obviously the inevitable happened (ever since it came down to McCain and Mike Huckabee…oh yeah and Ron Paul) with McCain winning the nomination and Huckabee finally conceding. Huckabee’s concession speech was somewhat heart-warming while trying to sway voters from his camp to McCain (and perhaps a nudge McCain’s way, looking for a spot on the Republican ticket as VP).

Even though there are conservatives (Rush Limbaugh) who do not support McCain as their candidate, he will gain a lot of undecided and independent voters over the next month or so as Obama and Clinton continue to beat each other up searching for their own shot at the White House. There’s a long time to go until November, but the trail there will be full of blood and eventually one more Democrat will fall off. Who that is remains to be seen, but the sooner that decision is made, the better off the Democratic Party.

Cartoons courtesy of: http://rawstory.com/images/new/clinton_obama_boxing.jpg AND http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/election2008/ig/2008-Election-Cartoons/

 

Filed under: Elections, National Government, National Politics, News Bytes, Politics