Charles_Main
AR15 Owner
Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. Think of John McCains desperate hope that elevating Joe the Plumber would change the shape of the 2008 race, and you have the template for how tin-eared and desperate a losing presidential campaign often sounds and ever since the first debate cost Obama his air of inevitability, he and his surrogates have sounded more like McCain did with Joe the Plumber than like a typical incumbent president on his way to re-election. A winning presidential campaign would not normally be hyping non-issues like Big Bird and binders full of women in its quest for a closing argument, or rolling out a new spin on its second-term agenda with just two weeks left in the race, or pushing so many advertising chips into dishonest attacks on its rivals position on abortion. A winning presidential campaign would typically be talking about the issues that voters cite as most important jobs, the economy, the deficit rather than trying to bring up Planned Parenthood and PBS at every opportunity. A winning presidential campaign would not typically have coined the term Romnesia, let alone worked it into their candidates speeches.
Obama's Aura of Defeat - NYTimes.com
Interesting