The August Turn

As I feared, the negative strategy appears to be paying dividends. McCain has captured the lead: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080820/pl_nm/usa_poll_politics_dc_3&printer=1;_ylt=AstxessPWFOS8TR.3cSfpTIb.3QA. What has changed? As with 2004 and 2000, the negative ad campaign of the summer has changed the tenor of the race and shifted the focus from the issues to one of character and readiness to lead. Obama has faltered under the relentless attack, changing some of his positions (flip-flop), losing momentum and failing to offer a sufficient counterattack.

People have actually come to believe that McCain would do better for the economy based solely on one issue -- off shore drilling. Unfortunately, this appears to relate to a misunderstanding of the fundamental problems with the U.S. economy and the continued negative effects of dramatical inequalities in income and wealth. Just yesterday, McCain failed to vote to eliminate billions of dollars in tax cuts for the very oil companies that have earned record profits while the economy falls into recession (the bill fell one vote short of the 60 needed to pass it). And they are not alone. The CEOs whose irresponsibility led to the mortgage crises made fortunes for their ineptitude. Wall Street powerbrokers continue to make bags full of money as people lose their savings and see their investments fall. And less than 10 percent of the population (really 1 percent) reaps most of the benefits of rapidly growing corporate profits from 2003 to 2007.

McCain simply wants to get more oil from America and continue the failed economic policies of the Bush administration -- lax regulation, huge tax cuts for the rich, the elimination of the inheritance tax and low actual corporation taxation. He is also steeped in the very lobbyist system he once claimed to abhor. Obama is offering a more sensible tax policy, a long term plan for "energy indepence" and at least some attempt to address corruption in campaign financing and lobbying. Yet the American people are sucked in by the "celebrity" discourse, the failure of many democrats to overcome their bitterness over Clinton's loss and a candidate with no real policy ideas except to continue the conservative push to accumulate power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer super rich. Will cynicism win again in the end?