After one of the longest primary seasons in recent memory, the General Election campaign began in earnest last night.
First, while Barack Obama was slowly gathering the final delegates he needed to clinch the nomination, John McCain delivered a shot across the bow in Louisiana:
NEW ORLEANS, June 3 — Republican Sen. John McCain wasted no time Tuesday night in launching his first general-election broadside against Sen. Barack Obama, casting the Democrat as an out-of-touch liberal who offers a false promise of change.
In a prime-time speech designed to upstage Obama on the night he claimed the Democratic nomination, McCain began what top aides and other Republicans promise will be an aggressive effort to claim the mantles of reform, experience and mainstream values. Obama, he said, is an “impressive man” but one with a thin record.
“For all his fine words and all his promise, he has never taken the hard but right course of risking his own interests for yours, of standing against the partisan rancor on his side to stand up for our country,” McCain said less than two hours before Obama spoke in the same arena in St. Paul, Minn., where McCain will claim the Republican nomination in September.
In fact, McCain had kinder words to say with the odd-woman out of last night’s coverage than he did for the man he’ll be facing in November:
McCain began his speech by praising Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in the Democratic primary race won over many rural and working-class voters that McCain hopes to capture in November. “As the father of three daughters, I owe her a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach,” McCain said. “I am proud to call her my friend.”
Something tells me he wouldn’t exactly be saying that if Clinton were the nominee instead of Obama. Clearly, language like that is a deliberate effort to reach out Clinton supporters who have doubts about Obama; a constituency that McCain needs if he’s going to have any chance in November.
For his own part, Barack Obama used his moment in the spotlight to focus on his new opponent:
Standing on the same stage where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in September, Obama quickly pivoted to the general election, taking a swipe at his Republican opponent.
“John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy — cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota — he’d understand the kind of change that people are looking for,” Obama said.
“Change is a foreign policy that doesn’t begin and end with a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged,” Obama said. “It’s time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda’s leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century — terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That’s what change is.”
Let the battle begin.
