What to look for on Election Night
On election night, Nov. 4, we will have the answers to several key questions that have emerged during the course of this campaign. Here are a few things to look for.
Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Collegian's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query. You can also try a Basic search
3 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
On election night, Nov. 4, we will have the answers to several key questions that have emerged during the course of this campaign. Here are a few things to look for.
Party conventions are held in order to energize and unify the party and frame the issues for the general election campaign. So, it is not surprising that both major party candidates have repositioned their messages to strengthen their case with voters. Change. Change is the driving issue in this campaign. Obama has always been about change, but "change" for Obama used to be about changing our politics, i.e. moving beyond partisanship, AND changing party control of the White House from Republican to Democratic. Now, he is focused almost exclusively on the latter message. Gone is the inspiring vision of post-partisan politics; the focus now is to attach McCain to Bush and advance a traditionally Democratic agenda. The appointment of Joe Biden as his running mate is further evidence that he wants to mobilize his base and appeal to the lower income, union voters who supported Hillary Clinton. McCain, on the other hand, whose pre-convention message essentially boiled down to experience, i.e. Obama is "not ready to lead," has shifted to a new message of change, i.e. reforming Washington. By selecting Palin, he has essentially conceded the issue of experience, and his campaign speech was decidedly focused on changing the politics in Washington ... post-partisanship. This theme might ring a bill to Obama supporters who voted for him over the more "partisan" Hillary Clinton.
The media have been obsessed with the issue of candidate experience since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. Have we had enough? If Barack Obama has proven anything in this campaign, it is that limited governing experience does not disqualify anyone for the presidency. McCain can certainly be criticized for having reversed field by selecting a relatively inexperienced running matter after blasting Obama for his lack of experience. McCain's decision seems to be a concession that experience is not all that important after all. There will be no end to a debate about whether Obama or Palin has more or more important experience. But the debate is irrelevant. One could argue reasonably that no experience can prepare the next president for this job. As Obama and his surrogates have pointed out, President Lincoln, who is ranked among historians as one of the 3 greatest presidents of all time, never held a statewide office.