North Star Writers Group - Syndicated Commentary: Opinion, Humor and Features

October 13, 2008

The Mailer That Put the Final Nail in the McCain Campaign Coffin

Close to 100 million Americans received mailers last week, or will receive them next week, that will put the last nail in the coffin of the McCain/Palin campaign.

It wasn't sent by Barack Obama, nor by a 527 group, not by any nonprofit or even a political organization.

It didn't mention John McCain or Sarah Palin, Obama or Joe Biden. It didn't mention taxes or Iraq, gay marriage or abortion or any other campaign hot button topic.

But the mailer, personalized, received by tens of millions of Americans, perhaps 100 million, in the past week, or in the next week, is the single envelope that will have caused John McCain and many Republican incumbents to lose their seats.

I got one addressed to my youngest son on Thursday, then another addressed to me on Friday.

Then I talked to friends, members of my synagogue and fellow activists at a local fundraiser. Just about everyone had received them. The message was the same for everyone.

The first envelope I received, for my son, was a quarterly mutual fund report – where we have most of his college savings. The letter reported that since the beginning of the year, the savings were down over 30 percent – even though the fund was a "blend" fund.

The next envelope, which I received on Friday, was a quarterly report on my IRA, also down more than 30 percent.

These reports were sent out on September 30, before the market dropped an additional 19 percent. I knew the numbers I was looking at were much worse, just 10 days later.

Tens of millions of Americans, maybe over 100 million Americans, have received their quarterly statements this week for IRAs, mutual funds and 401(k)s. They're all getting a mailer that is causing much pain, much stress and an acute realization that the economic crisis has hit home.

They're probably still arriving, as I write this, for a few more days. We've seen the result in the polls. The response will grow. The pundits, if they've guessed this is about anything else, are probably wrong.

It's hard to imagine, after eight years of George W. Bush and primarily Republican rule, most Americans not concluding that the GOP and its approach to government and the economy caused their pain, their loss, their fear for the future.

It's hard to imagine McCain's campaign getting anywhere with their desperate gambits – abortion this week . . . what, terrorism next week? Or raising taxes? They saved the average family $2,000 or $5,000 in taxes over the past eight years and cost them $35,000 or $200,000 in lost retirement savings and depreciated home value.

No. The most powerful election-affecting mailer this cycle is being sent by the financial companies that so many Americans put their trust in. Those quarterly notices are all Obama needs. If he and the DSCC and DCCC congressional campaign committees are smart, they'll run ads this week referring to those notices. They'll remind the voters who discontinued the regulations that prevented financial institutions from leveraging themselves so badly – Henry Paulson. They'll remind voters who pushed for earlier deregulations – Phil Gramm, McCain's primary economic mentor.

But that's all icing on the Obama celebration cake. Obama and most of the Democrats running for Congress could probably sit on their hands, on their campaign funds, and do almost nothing, from this point on. (They don't want people to think that, of course. They want the campaign to re-double efforts.) They will still win.

These are sad times. Reality is far more powerful than any campaign words. For the neocons, the corporatists and their theocon supporters, the chickens have indeed come home to roost – and they've crapped all over almost every American.

Now. If you're an Obama or Democratic candidate supporter, go out and ask anyone you talk to and tie the mailer together with the election, if they haven't tied it together for themselves yet.