How McCain couuld have won

Yesterday I posted two mistakes the McCain campaign made. Here's how he could have won.

Support Barack Obama. Back in 2004, people wanted security. George W. Bush was the candidate for security. David Frum wrote a piece on how Kerry could have won had he criticized the poor efforts the Bush administration was making in the war on terror. This campaign people want hope and optimism. For several reasons, Obama had that angle locked up since the primaries. As a result, constantly criticizing his policies and associations, and trying to bring up scandal did not have the effect of increasing support for McCain, but of dowsing hope and optimism. People supported Obama all the more. As a result, McCain needed to support Obama.

• "You want to meet with leaders of foreign countries face to face? I do, too! That's exactly where this world needs to head. I think you're wrong that you can do it on November 5th, but we can get there by...."
• "You want to improve the fortune of the middle class? That's exactly what we need to do. I think we need to put pressure on the wealthiest to be donating more money to NGOs and NPOs--and we'll let them keep these companies accountable by their donations--which will let us ease the tax burden on the middle class and help to create grassroots charity and help which is the backbone of American grace and help."
• "Barack Obama is not a socialist."
• "Barack Obama is not a Muslim...no matter what some of you think." (And McCain did this at one of his rallies, but it remains an issue with many of Obama's detractors.)
• "I spoke at ACORN conventions before and they do important work. I am embarrassed that some of their workers have done some foolish things. But Barack Obama is not those workers."

It's important to note that the McCain campaign may not really believe all those things, but they still needed to say them and appear as optimistic as Obama's supporters.