Okay. The primary is over. I can return to my regularly scheduled political vitriol without choking on it and keeling over. Am I happy with the primary results? Meh. I knew I’d be unhappy the moment Edwards lost his footing, and that hasn’t changed. Do I think Obama would make a better President? Yes. Do I think Hillary would have an easier time of winning? Yes again. So not a huge shift in that department.

The tap dancing piss water of media concern over the past few days (and likely well into the next few weeks) are going to be Vice Presidential candidates. Now, in theory, there should only be one qualifying metric for choosing your VP. “If I were to die, would I trust this person to run the country?” That should be the one and only question worth asking. Sadly, I’d say that question isn’t even on the table for most people, because that’s not the electoral function that a VP serves anymore. The Veep “balances” the ticket – it provides for the candidate the qualities that said candidate is otherwise lacking.

Kerry picked Edwards because he had a southern accent, he was easy to listen to, and he had a lot of charisma. Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman because he hadn’t yet made the worst mistake in his life, and he was about due. George Bush picked Dick Cheney because that’s what Dick Cheney told him to do, god damn it. And so it goes.

If Hillary had won, her choice would have been easy. She would have scooped up Wesley Clark, a former four-star General, a former Presidential candidate, a long-standing critic of the Iraq War, and one of the first major political figures to firmly endorse Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And Wes is a damn smart guy, too. I don’t think his 2004 campaign had what it would have taken to go the distance, but the guy is razor sharp and just a genuinely good human being.

The early rumors are that Obama is also looking for some military experience to counterweight his candidacy, though I don’t think Clark is likely to join him on the ticket. I’m not sure who that leaves in terms of public figures, but it need not be a known individual. Though on the flip side, Obama is already going to have enough trouble because of his general unfamiliarity with the public (the last 10 months aside). His other alternative is to select an already established political figure from the 2008 primary. I’ve heard both Bill Richardson and Mike Gravel, though I wouldn’t bank on either. Hillary as a choice is “obvious” but I don’t think it’s likely. And Obama is right not to pick her. As much as I’d like to see the Clinton Counterpunch make a comeback, it would make the whole primary seem like the dog-and-pony show that it truly was. And that might actually distance voters from the process.

As for McCain? Egads, who does he even go with? I mean, the archetype is clear. He needs to go get himself a religious conservative running mate and fast. He’s already going to be a damn hard sell to that strong Christian voting block, so you can expect him to form an uneasy alliance with a serious holy roller before his party has their convention. It would be a bad move for him to pick one of the primary losers as well, though the only one that really fits the bill in the first place would be Mike Huckabee. I’ve heard spatterings of both Joe Lieberman and Jeb Bush – and really, I would pay money to see either of those campaigns. No, his Veep will be someone most of the country has never heard of, but regular 700 Club viewers know on a first name basis.

As for the runup to November? Well, I hope you like race bating, because there’s going to be a steady stream of it coming from independent groups that John McCain and the GOP are really, really, really super duper not even a tiny bit related to or associated with. Honest. For reals. The swift boating of Barak Obama will be ugly and tense. It will also be unrelenting from August to late October. It wouldn’t even surprise me to hear the phrase “race riots” before the year is out.

It will be, to say the least, interesting to see how Obama runs his campaing now that he’s in an actual race as opposed to the good natured slapfight that he was in with Hillary. It’s my fear that he will lack the aggression and even the ruthlessness necessary to win, preferring instead to place his faith entirely in the same public that nearly voted George W. Bush into office two elections in a row. I don’t trust that. Honestly, I can’t trust that, not at this juncture. What Obama needs to do, and what the rest of his party needs to do, is to Learn To Rove.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating spreading rumors about illegitimate inter-racial children or spiking terror alerts or postering neighborhoods with pamphlets that list the wrong election date. Those are all flavor tactics. Those are the methodology and not the target. The core mechanic of Rovian politics is actually blissfully simple. You attack your opponent where he is strongest. You don’t look for weak spots or faults – most people already know what they don’t like about a candidate. Instead, you figure out what your opponent really has going for him and you take that away from him.

It works for so many reasons. First off, your opponent never sees it coming. In 2004, a draft dodger attacked a medal-winning Vietnam veteran for being anti-military for fuck’s sake! In both of Bush’s elections, his opponents were mocked for being too intellectual, for being too smart. They went after Edwards because he has a history of fighting against corperate interests. And way, way back, in the 2000 primary, they spread rumors that John McCain was unfit to be President because he’d been broken by his captors when he was a P.O.W.

The second benefit is that you take way your opponent’s stable base. You rob him of the issue that he knows he can rely on. And in doing so, you rob him of his credentials. You make him look like a liar for campaigning on genuine values because you have publically called those values into question. You force him to play defense and force him to look weak. You force him to fall back onto qualities that are not as appealing, not as strong. It’s a devestating tactic that would be suicide on an actual battlefield, but when your only cost is words instead of lives, it can and does work.

They will go after Obama for being black. Yes, you and I both know they will. But they will go after him for being a relatively new to politics as well, even though that seems like a strength because it plays well into his change memes. They will attack him for being optimistic, because how is some bright-eyed beatnick going to protect America from “the al-Queda”? Most importantly, they will directly confront and attack his “change” rhetoric, on the basic assumption that they can make it sound either head-in-the-clouds absurd or scary – as a rule, most people resist change when they are actually confronted with it. They will attack him anywhere he seems strong, and honestly, so far I’ve never seen Obama properly set up and execute a counterpunch.

McCain, though. He’s an easy target for the Rovian method. In a lot of ways, he’s set himself up to be. He runs on a platform of being honest and sincere. On being opposed to lobbyist money (which, again, they will simultaneously attack Obama for). On not being beholden to religious extremists. On being able to work with both Democrats and Republicans. On being a long-standing icon in politics and having a vast network of solid connections in both the government and the media. And those are the places that Obama needs to attack him.

Attack his sincerity and his integrity – make it seem as if he reverses his positions. Find any minute lobbyist interaction and play it like a harp from hell. Make constant noise over the fact that McCain’s campaign finance reforms would have bankrupted his own campaign. Force him to two-step. Show the footage of him at Falwell’s university, and replay every last snippet of newsreal of him standing side by side with George W. Bush – another aspect that up until a few years ago was considered one of his strengths. Attack him for being just another political insider, for being up to his eyebrows in greasy handshakes and political favors.

Hit him where he is strong, and you leave him nothing to fall back on. His stance on Iraq is vastly unpopular, his economic policy is more of the Neoconservative bullshit that has wrecked our country’s finances, and ever since the end of that 2000 primary, he’s had the lifeless spark of a dead toad. Make him fortify at his weak points, and he loses. It needs doing. And I don’t think Obama has the strength or the stomach to do it. I just can’t see the man with bruises on his knuckles.

I still hope I’m wrong.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.