The first debate
Barack Obama, the new, improved George McGovern, won yesterday evening’s Mississippi debate against John McCain. Mr. Obama won comfortably. It was not even close. (This writer admittedly heard the debate’s audio only, over radio. Readers that saw the debate on television and judged it otherwise are invited to comment below at their discretion.)
To offer here a detailed post-mortem of the debate would not be this blog’s style and this article will not attempt it. Suffice it to say that Mr. McCain did fairly well during the debate’s last twenty minutes when the topic was the valor of U.S. troops, but that the rest of the debate did not go well for Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama’s left-wing answers were well organized and clear. Mr. McCain’s confused answers were disorganized and rambling. Regarding the Crash of 2008, Mr. McCain put his meager understanding of economics on full display.
Incredibly, as Mr. Obama looked on, Mr. McCain spent a significant fraction of the debate actually attacking his own, Republican party, whose support Mr. McCain does not deserve.
To excerpt tactically Mr. McCain’s several debate-losing moments would be too depressing, so let us turn instead to the moment in which Mr. McCain most lost, not the public’s support generally, but The Economic Nationalist’s support specifically:
I supported us going into Bosnia, when a number of my own party and colleagues was against that operation in Bosnia. That was the right thing to do, to stop genocide and to preserve what was necessary inside of Europe.
I supported what we did in Kosovo. I supported it because ethnic cleansing and genocide was taking place there.
What was necessary inside of Europe, Mr. McCain says? What does he think that he means by that? Does he think that Muslim Albanian jihadists were playing beanbag over there? Someone should explain to the man what jihad is. But, then, Mr. McCain’s first instinct always has been to grandstand by attacking his own. Evidently fellow Christians like the Serbs are as attractive a target to Mr. McCain as fellow Republicans are.
That the historically ignorant Mr. McCain actually considers himself “a student of history” is scary.
As Democratic nominee, Barack Obama is the only person that can keep John McCain out of the White House. There are weighty reasons to oppose Mr. Obama, especially regarding the kind of liberal justice he would very probably appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such reasons however are outweighed by contrary considerations. For the good of the Republic, The Economic Nationalist must recommend voting Obama in November.
To those to whom voting Obama seems a bridge too far, a vote for the Constitution Party’s hopeless Chuck Baldwin would be a worthy half-substitute.
HJH