What really killed us was nominating a self-described maverick as the standard bearer and who actively campaigned against his own party. By doing that he alienated many Reps and hurt Reps down ticket.
Interestingly, when you look at the total numbers cast in 2008, I will be surprised if they exceed the number in 2004. Bush beat Kerry 62 mmillion to 59 million. As of now, Obama is beating McCain about 62 million to 55 million. I wonder how much more we will exceed the 121 million combined votes in 2004.
In 2004 in Indiana about 2.5 million votes were cast compared to 2.7 million in 2008. I think this turnout hype turned out to be just that. Obama was able to energize his voters, but the Reps did not.
What really killed us was nominating a self-described maverick as the standard bearer and who actively campaigned against his own party. By doing that he alienated many Reps and hurt Reps down ticket.
Worse yet, he was faced with a choice in the final weeks, and he chose to salvage his own reputation over the good of the country.
In 1996, everybody knew Dole was going down, and they were able to salvage some of the downticket races by redeploying resources. Well, McCain's been toast for weeks (never mind their polite fiction about all the polls in Pennsylvania going their way), and yet nothing. Downticket races starved as the McCain campaign squandered its money. The difference is that Dole was a GOP man, and McCain was only interested in getting his vote totals as high as possible so his campaign would look less pathetic in the history books.
"Country First" is a sick joke. It was McCain first, McCain second, McCain third and the country could go to hell for all he cared.