Steve Schmidt, who managed Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, told Politico that he left his own ballot blank on Election Day.
Said Schmidt: “The only conceivable conclusion that you could get to after watching his conduct in this campaign was that he’s completely unfit to be president. Truth is, I didn’t vote for him, either.”
Steve Schmidt: “This is a story about lying. Public lying. It is a story about Senator John McCain’s lying, and the damage it has done to many people, including me. It is also a story about my lying because, ultimately, John McCain’s lie became mine.”
“Over time, that lie has become heavier as I have been abused by the family of the man I worked for as a volunteer. The burden of carrying this lie – while being attacked for 14 consecutive years by the bully Megan McCain – has finally reached its end for me.”
At the moment the late Sen. John McCain green-lit Sarah Palin as his presidential running mate in 2008, he told top advisers: “Fuck it. Let’s do it,” Axios reports.
The anecdote is included in a new book by Jeremy Peters, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.
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New York Times: “With its staggering death toll, surging unemployment and economic devastation, the Covid-19 crisis confronting the nation today is far more cataclysmic than the 2008 meltdown. But Obama and McCain faced a series of choices — on leadership, empathy and tone, on executing political strategy and navigating fast-moving events on Wall Street, Main Street and Washington — that are relevant and even illuminating as President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. try to navigate another campaign playing out against the backdrop of a national emergency.”
“After the Lehman bankruptcy on Sept. 15, over the crush of the next 14 days, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama were forced to respond to a crisis in real time. It involved a complex unraveling on Wall Street, the anxieties of millions of Americans seeing huge losses in their retirement accounts, and the polarized politics of the White House and Capitol Hill. There was little time for polling or focus groups, aides to both campaigns said, and decisions were made on instinct.”
“These were the 14 days that decided the 2008 race and assured Mr. Obama’s election as the next president, in the view of both the McCain and Obama camps.”
Josh Kraushaar: “Republicans are growing increasingly worried that President Trump’s shaky political position will not just cost them the presidency, but also sweep in a Democratic Senate majority and further diminish their House minority. The latest round of polling shows the president losing to Joe Biden, as well as Democrats gaining ground in red-state Senate seats that once looked like long shots, from Georgia to Montana to Kansas. There’s a growing chance that Democrats may capture control of the Senate with a seat or two to spare.”
“The current political environment is reminiscent of 2008, two years after Democrats swept control of the House and Senate under President George W. Bush. It’s mostly remembered for Barack Obama’s historic election, but the Democrats’ downballot dominance was just as remarkable. Riding deep dissatisfaction with GOP leadership, Democrats expanded their Senate majority to a near filibuster-proof margin and won House seats in some of the most reliably conservative territory in the country.”
David Axelrod writes for CNN that Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign didn’t find any claims of sexual misconduct when vetting former Vice President Joe Biden.
Said Axelrod: “Had any credible issue been raised, you can be sure Biden would not have been the nominee. Obama would not have tolerated it, even if he and Biden were close then, which they were not.”
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Charleston Post & Courier: “As the 2020 Democratic race prepares to enter the crucial fall campaign season, it’s now former Vice President Joe Biden who is far in front of the pack for South Carolina’s pivotal First in the South primary — and determined not to let history repeat itself.”
“Some supporters of other candidates, like former state Rep. Bakari Sellers, who endorsed U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, cite potential parallels with 2008 as a reason why they believe the race remains wide open despite Biden’s commanding lead.”
Said Sellers: “I think the vice president’s support, a lot like the first lady’s support at the time, is very wide, but it’s not deep. I think once Sen. Harris is able to prove her electability, which I don’t have much concern that she will, I expect the tide to change with African American voters like it did with Hillary Clinton.”
Katie Couric told BuzzFeed News that says her 2008 interview with then-Gov. Sarah Palin during the presidential campaign would likely have been treated much differently if it happened today.
Palin was asked which newspapers and magazines reads and enthusiastically responded: “All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.” Her response led to widespread mocking by late night comedians.
Said Couric: “I think there’s such a reverse snobbery about intellectuals that I think it would almost be seen as a badge of honor. I think that’s really concerning.”
The New York Times projects a national popular vote margin of roughly 8.5% for the Democrats. The FiveThirtyEight average for the generic congressional ballot gave Democrats a 8.7% lead.
Sam Wang notes the popular vote margin in the last four midterm elections which were considered wave elections:
By historical staandards, that would be a wave election for the Democrats.
When asked by Bloomberg if the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would have been a better president than Barack Obama, President Trump “declined to say, even as his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stared at him.”
Said Trump: “I don’t want to comment on it. I have a very strong opinion, all right.”
He then joked that Sanders was “having a nervous breakdown” over his response. “Maybe I’ll give you that answer some day later.”
“John McCain’s funeral will spotlight some of the late senator’s political rivals – but some of his closest campaign aides are being excluded from the proceedings,” Politico reports.
“Three of the most prominent members of his 2008 presidential campaign – campaign manager Steve Schmidt, senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, and longtime strategist John Weaver — were not invited to any of McCain’s services.”
“It’s not clear whether McCain ordered the snubbing of formerly high-ranking aides before his death.”
The HuffPost notes Sarah Palin was also not invited to the services.
Sarah Palin told the Daily Mail that Sen. John McCain, who picked her as his vice presidential running mate in 2008, was surrounded by “disloyal” people.
Said Palin: “I think it’s unfortunate that he had people around him—and they continued to be around him for a very long time—who weren’t serving him well.”
She added: “I think that’s unfortunate because he had some strange people around him and… disloyal people, and you know, I don’t say that as like hate speech or griping about it, it’s just a fact they were just some not nice people.”
“In a contest as long as difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), telling supporters to stop booing Barack Obama during his 2008 concession speech.
Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt explained on the Words Matter podcast how Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) settled on Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Said Schmidt: “I have regret about that every day that I wake up. But what happened here was — that my idea, and McCain supported it, was that he was going to pick Joe Lieberman.”
He continued: “What happened though is Lindsey Graham went out, not maliciously, but he let the secrets spill, it leaked when he was talking to a group of activists in South Carolina, and within a very short period of time we had heard from Limbaugh from Hannity, directly from President Bush, from Karl Rove saying ‘you can’t do it.”
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“Oh yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I woulda pushed back harder on some of those who were trying to mold me into something that I was not during the campaign. I would’ve pushed back and gotten more truth out there, but heck yeah.”
— Sarah Palin, quoted by TPM, on whether she would run for office again.
“A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request,” the New York Times reports.
“Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. But Mrs. Clinton did not. Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.