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December 16, 2008
The Election
Everyone who studies American politics expected a victory by the Democratic nominee (whoever it turned out to be) this year. I expected it. A number of factors such as: two term president, personally unpopular, economic troubles, unpopular war, growing number of registered members of the Democratic party - I could go on but the odds were strongly on the side of the Democratic party this year.
President-elect Obama was not a strong candidate and McCain was a strong candidate on the Republican side so the race actually looked close for a while. But the hammer blows of the credit market freeze in September and the massive stock drops were nails in the coffin of the McCain effort. McCain's real weak spot in his resume was economics. He neither showed much interest in it over the last 20 years, nor did he have an "A Team" of advisers who could command confidence on the topic.
There was no chance for McCain to win following the collapse of Meryll Lynch and Lehman Brothers in mid-September of 2008. When icons of American investment go under, the American people will say "its time for a change of government".
To me the surprise was that Virgina and New Mexico were solid wins for Obama and Colorado wasn't that close. Most of the other results were extremely likely from a year ago. California was so out-of-reach for McCain that no effort was made here by the Republican party nor was any money spent on presidential advertising.
So far (mid-December 2008) I've been impressed with Obama's choices for his cabinet and White House staff. However, he has a world of troubles to deal with and I very much doubt he will manage to make much progress on any (?) of them during the next four years.
Posted by rakhier at December 16, 2008 10:13 AM