What Was McCains Big Mistake

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:35:17 EST

I voted this morning, and it was a very quick experience. I waited all of two or three minutes to have my voter ID card verified, and then I was handed a paper ballot, which took me less than thirty seconds to fill out.

Then it was over.

Judging by the number of people stopping for Democratic sample ballots, it was probably over for McCain too.

McCain had a chance to win this election, but he blew it when he voted for the financial bailout. You remember...he interrupted his campaign and the debate to fly back to Washington to vote YES on the bailout.

Had he voted NO, and taken O'Reilly up on his idea of bringing in Rudy Guilliani to prosecute the Wall Street CEO's, he would have put Obama in a box, and come back to win.

(The O'Reilly campaign idea was a good one, and probably the only good one he's had this year. He's still ignorantly blaming the oil companies for all sorts of excess.)

Campaigning to put Wall Street CEO's in the hoosegow would have been maverick, and even the media would have been hard pressed to oppose him on that. GE's Jeffrey Imeldt deserves to go to jail for treason, and that would have good theatre too. Imeldt and GE, which includes NBC, continue to due business with Iran as we speak.

This would have been one of the greatest campaign issues of all time, and McCain and his team let it slip right through their hands. It also would have involved prosecuting members of Congress who had a hand in the scandal, like Senator Tom Dodd, and Representative Barney Frank.

Dodd was deeply involved with disgraced Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozili, and Barney was doing the horizontal bop with Fannie or Freddie. Dodd, when asked about his extremely questionable mortgage replied that he didn't know Angelo was involved, or that VIP service involved anything special.

Obama himself was involved in a questionable loan. This would have made all his spread the wealth claims a bunch of hooey.

But McCain never really went on the attack.

Why?

We'll never know.

He let Obama off the hook when it was in there pretty tight.

And it won't make any difference at all when he goes back to the Senate. He lost, and that's that. He'll have no power, and being a weak opposition leader is nothing to brag about.

This falls into a category that an old coach of mine called,
"coulda, shoulda, woulda." It ain't a compliment.

It means that you had the opportunity and skill to defeat your opponent and failed.

I suspect that's what the McCain people will be talking about for years.

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What Was McCains Big Mistake