What hurt McCain more than anything was when the stock market crashed and he TRIED to downplay it. Right up until that moment it was a tie race. The voters actually DO make independent assessments of each candidate (this seems to surprise some people). They had let McCain be DIFFERENT than Bush (as he was) right up until the moment he uttered the phrase that destroyed his chances of winning: "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."
That killed him.
Not Palin.
Not "Bush is in the White House"
Not the so-called blue wall.
There's an eerie fact behind this that almost nobody knew about back in 2008.
Look at the following line from a speech:
"New Hampshire has stood more than its share of rain, job - hurting and the families wondering how they're going to make their ends meet. But there is going to be a rainbow out there. There's some fundamentals that are pretty darn good.
This was a speech given on January 15, 1992 - by President George H W Bush in Exeter, New Hampshire....in the midst of a deepening recession. The moment I heard McCain's comments, this came flying back to my mind. Most folks who were adults in that campaign don't even remember this speech.
Why?
Well, the very next day, the "Star" tabloid broke the Bill Clinton affair with Gennifer Flowers story. But Bush would have had more trouble with that comment had he made it nationally in September after a market crash, too.
A liberal buddy of mine (now deceased) and I were talking about this and he said, "The fundamentals of the economy - the Republican gift that keeps on giving every single campaign."
