Is it really over? Thank God! Although the presidential race has served as my bread and butter for the past 21 months, I for one am glad it’s over.

After almost two years of campaigning, Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain by an overwhelming majority on November 4th. Obama’s win is undoubtedly historic as he is the first African-American to be elected to the United State’s highest office. Was it destiny? Was Obama the right candidate at the right time? Was George W. Bush a factor? Was it the economy? Or, did John McCain screw up? Probably all of these played a part in president elect Barack Obama’s crushing of his opponent. Granted, the Obama team built an unstoppable machine with hundreds of headquarters all across the US as he inspired the nation’s youth to volunteer. Democratic voter registration increased and even doubled anything the republicans were seeing. Obama’s choice to object public financing gave his the power to outspend his opponent 10 to 1. So, the question remains: Did McCain ever really stand a chance?

This was McCain’s second and unquestionably last run for the White House, but unlike his first, something changed in the Senator from Arizona. He made choices that left us scratching our heads. Even non-republicans were wondering what happen to the John McCain we thought we knew.

After McCain was named the presumptive nominee there wasn’t a whole lot of excitement about the candidate – a bit like how the Dems felt about John Kerry. In fact, many republicans were not on board from the get-go and refused to support him. Most eventually reluctantly jumped on bandwagon; what else could they do? Endorse Obama?
Obama ran on hope and a promise of a greater tomorrow, McCain didn’t.

From day one of being named the presumptive nominee of his party, McCain began to build his platform on fear; mistake number one. This was the same tactic used by Karl Rove in 2004 to reelect George Bush. Scare the hell out of voters and you will win. But a lot has changed from 2004 to the present. We are learning more everyday as to how and why the war in Iraq was started, we are seeing that the administration took their eye off of Osama bin Laden, we saw gas hit close to $5 a gallon when they promised it would go down after the invasion, and we are seeing our troops come home either in body bags or gravely injured. When McCain said we could spend a hundred years in Iraq that was probably his second mistake. Combine these two mistakes and you get the Bush Doctrom – stay until we succeed. While it would be a mistake to leave the country in a hurry, to stay for a hundred years? He later clarified what he meant, but the damage was done.

The Sarah Palin Effect

Just days after blasting Obama for his rock star status, McCain announced that Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin would be joining the ticket and the media went crazy. Who was this woman? Why did he choose her? Where did she stand on the issues? Who does her hair and makeup – well, maybe not, but we found out anyway. For Democrats, the pick of Palin was obvious: She was a woman who McCain’s brilliant team of experts thought she could get all of those disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters. The problem with this bright idea was, Clinton is a liberal and Palin is a conservative. And after we found out just how conservative she was – no abortion even in the case of rape or incest – there would be no way any woman would vote for McCain just because of his running mate’s gender. Other juicy facts began to leak despite the McCain’s camp efforts to isolate her from the media. Troopergate and the Bridge to nowhere had the left chomping at the bit for week; I thought MSNBC Countdown’s Keith Olbermann was going to explode on a nightly bases. The Katie Couric interviews were a devastating blow to Palin’s credibility. Her answer to having foreign policy experience and the economic melt down were so comical that Saturday Night Live’s Tina Faye didn’t have to alter what Palin said all that much. Voters began to see Palin as not being ready to step into the role of president if anything were to happen to McCain. Even conservitives have been turning on the Governor, including George Will, David Brooks and ultra-conservative columnist for the National Review Online, Kathleen Parker. This said quite a bit about McCain’s judgement and his real motives – not Country First but winning first.

Going negative

In the beginning McCain promised to run a clean campaign and to focus on the issues. He said that going negative was for candidates who had nothing of substance to run on. When he began to see the polls shifting back into Obama’s favor, his campaign went to the dark side. He claimed Obama was a friend to terrorist, a socialist, and in ads that ran a day before the election, the GOP ran an ad featuring Revend Wright – something McCain vowed to stay away from. He ran on the platform of fear, the fear that Obama was too radical, too liberal, untested, and that he would raise everyones taxes. During all three the debates McCain came across as cranky, condencending and rude. Voters didn’t respond to his negative tone. Moreover, unlike Obama, he had no consistant message.

In the end, McCain’s chances to be elected were slim from the start, but with the many mistakes he made over the course of 21 months, he received less electoral votes than he probably would have had he stayed on course he ran on in 2000.

Tony Engelhart is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .