Steve Schmidt, Chief Strategist of the McCain campaign, was interviewed by The Daily Best. In the interview, Schmidt explains why he believes they lost the election. He also speaks shortly about Governor Sarah Palin, mostly in defense of her, although it becomes clear that he is truly no fan of the politician from Alaska.

Most interesting about the interview is that Schmidt says he believed the battle to be lost in September, after the financial markets crashed. At that moment it was incredibly difficult if not impossible to come back from behind and to win the election, Schmidt says.

One wonders why this man remained in place, instead of stepping down at that moment. He tells The Daily Beast that both he and Sen. John McCain decided to fight on, seemingly with Schmidt believing the goal to be going down fighting and with honor. That is not a winning mentality; it indicates he should have resigned at that moment and let others who actually believed in the mission take over.

Schmidt also believes that the Republican Party will have to play catch up with the Democratic Party with regards to technology, and then especially the Intrnet. “The Democratic Party is a generation ahead technologically. And the Republican Party is going to have to be competitive to catch up in a world where viral information is just as important as what might be in the network news,” he says.

Although Schmidt is certainly right about that, it is fascinating to see that this man was in charge of the McCain campaign. No one else was. And if this campaign failed in one regard, it was on the Internet; the Internet was used horrible, there was little to no outreach to bloggers, the website was little more than a collection of advertisements and campaign slogans, with no way for visitors to participate in the campaign, and to feel a part of Team McCain.

Schmidt was responsible for that, no one else.

He did have some interesting things to say about the need for the Republican Party to reach out to African Americans and Latinos: for too long have Democrats been allowed to dominate these two groups. The monopoly on the black vote is likely to continue in the coming years, for as long as Barack Obama is president. Nonetheless, Republicans should do everything in their power to peel off some black support for the Democratic Party in general – you could start by having them support a Republican member for Congress – and there is enough room to do something about the Hispanic vote. Hispanics are cultural conservatives and religious. There is certainly a lot of room to compete for their vote, which will be essential in the coming years and especially decades.