McCain cannot govern simply as the non-Obama. He has to present a positive case for his policies and get the people to sign up for them. A vote against Obama, even if it is a landslide, will not be a mandate for anything, except not sitting in church with religious fanatics. That’s not going to be helpful when McCain goes to Congress to advance legislation.
That’s why this constant harping on Wright is such a waste of time. If the time were spent instead on highlighting Obama’s socialist agenda, and attacking that, then when he lost it would serve as a guide to what kind of policies people do not want. If it is effective, it would also serve to shift McCain away from some of his more socialist positions.
What I see in this obsessive focus on Wright is a party that no longer has a coherent set of economic ideas for which it is capable of arguing. So long as the extreme crazies of the religious right are kept in a lockbox, the Republicans think they can win the Culture War. In the meantime, the country’s economic system is falling apart, and they have gone AWOL in the battle for capitalism.
