It's a lot easier for the Democratic candidate to do his job when the media glare is off of him and onto Hurricane Sarah. But there's a very specific reason for Obama's post-convention bounce, captured by at least four new polls. Let's break it down.
- Have a pitch-perfect convention. Despite the abominable media coverage of the event, the DNC carried off very well. Over 38 million people watched Obama's prime-time address, one of the few unfiltered moments, and the reviews were very favorable. He framed the message of the campaign - that John McCain represents another four years of the same - skillfully, and put meat on the message of change by specifically citing where he would take the country. The other speeches and events reinforced this theme.
- Mind your business. With all the Hurricane Sarah stuff flying around, Obama has wisely stayed completely out of that conversation, explicitly warning the press to "back off" all these reports about the Vice Presidential nominee's pregnant daughter, a move that earned him praise across the political spectrum. There's no need for him to pile on to the Palin stuff - she's doing a perfectly good job of defining herself, and in the negative.
- Bring everything back to the core message. Instead of attacking Palin, Obama has relentlessly attacked McCain - and explicitly tied him to George Bush. Here's ad number one:
And number two.
The "more of the same" message appears at the end of every ad and inside every speech.
Finally, look how Obama rhetorically used yesterday's near-miss of Hurricane Gustav as a launching pad to talk about the "silent storm" of workers displaced, struggling and suffering while Bush-McCain economic policies offer them nothing (it's implicit message here, but it's undeniably present).
All across America there are quiet storms taking place. There are lives of quiet desperation. People in need of just a little bit of help. Now, Americans are a self-reliant people, we’re an independent people. We don’t like asking somebody else to do what we can do ourselves, but you know what we understand is that every once in a while somebody’s going to get knocked down. Every once in a while somebody’s going to go through some hard times. When we least expect it tragedy may strike. And what has always made this country great is the understanding that we rise and fall as one nation, that values and family, community and neighborhood, they have to express themselves in our government. Those are national values. Those are values that we all subscribe to. And so, the spirit that we extend today and in the days to come as we monitor what happens on the Gulf, that’s the spirit that we’ve got to carry with us each and every day. That’s the spirit that we need in our own homes and it’s the spirit that we need in the White House. And that’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.
- Do your job. In addition to messaging the McCain-Bush connection, the Obama campaign is not pollwatching, not putting together their tactics based on short-term political advantage but based on winning those 18 battleground states, based on raising their segment of Obama voters and moving the underlying data, based on registering and contacting as many potential voters as possible, based on meeting targets, and knowing that the game plan, if adhered to, will be successful. While DC insiders were trying to apologize for poll numbers a couple weeks ago, the Obama campaign ignored them - and did their work.
This is why those undecideds are collapsing, with many moving in Obama's direction. Those undecideds were probably decided anyway, but getting contact from the Obama campaign, hearing a message of change, a message of a break from Bush, without stepping into the Palin mess, and a clear direction of where the country ought to go has unquestionably sealed the deal for a lot of people, who won't be coming back out of that column. We focus a lot on what the other side is doing wrong, but I think we have to hand it to the political team that's getting the past two weeks right.
In the end, voters are schizophrenic. They want specifics beyond a change message and then they also say that they care more about character than issues. What this distills down to is that voters want to see the cues of how you run your campaign as a proxy of how you will run the country. And Obama is delivering. Talking about specifics over soaring rhetoric was as important as the specifics themselves. Using points of contrast with Bush-McCain instead of making anything out of Hurricane Sarah was a window into the man's character. Running a tight ship concerned with meeting numbers and registering voters instead of erratically freaking out about the latest fad from minute to minute displays confidence and competence. There are non-verbal cues that Obama is tapping into here, and the results are unquestionable.
UPDATE: When Obama's campaign was asked to address the elephant, or rather the elephant's VP pick, in the room, they kept the focus on John McCain. They could have thrown in the fact that he wasn't allowed to pick his on VP candidate because the Christianist wing of the party has held him hostage, but I'm not going to quibble. This is good stuff:
“The way the process was done should be of interest to voters because I do think it speaks to how things will be managed and executed as president,” said David Plouffe, who manages the Obama campaign. “At the end of the day, it may work out for them, but the process is a transparent moment for voters to decide how these two people will go about major decisions." [...]
In an interview here on Tuesday, Mr. Plouffe said voters should instead judge Mr. McCain for what he called an “impulsive” decision to choose Ms. Palin, who has served as governor of Alaska for 20 months. He said Ms. Palin’s governmental record in Alaska is fair game for examination in the final two months of the campaign, but not her family.
“You have to assume that when you’re making this pick – if something happened to you – you are choosing the 45th president of the United States,” Mr. Plouffe said. “And it’s a big decision.”