This is the sixth installment of my weekly series on the 2008 Presidential campaign. The purpose of this column is to recap the prior week’s events and provide some observations and suggestions for the Obama campaign to ensure victory in November.
I. The Surge is Working!.......the Obama surge that is...
Barack Obama opened the week with a slew of good polls following the Vice-Presidential debate and a devastating parody of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. Obama opened up clear leads in battlegrounds like Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado and expanded leads in blue states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire.
His lead in national polls at the beginning of the week ranged from 3 points to 10 points with a lot of polls clustering around the 5-7 point range. The range in the volatile tracking polls increased from a range of 2 to 11 points to 6 to 13 points, with many clustering around the 6-8 point range. As of this week he no longer appears to be threatened in any blue state. There is not one blue state that Obama doesn’t lead by double digits in at least 1 or 2 recent polls. During the middle and towards the tail end of the week, Obama’s national poll numbers increased, to an average margin of around 7-9 points according to pollster.com. Several polls posted leads for Obama in North Carolina (PPP, Civitas, Rasmussen). Georgia and West Virginia appear to be tightening, and Obama apparently told a fundraiser in Philly that he is ahead of McCain in Montana, a state that many thought had shifted to the GOP following their convention. So the question is: what the hell happened last week? Well, quite a lot.
II. McCain panics and blinks....again. Palin forgets the adage about glass houses. Wingnuts take center stage.
The McCain campaign started the week by using Palin as a blunt instrument to forcibly re-insert the William Ayers story into the news cycles and to accuse Obama of ‘pallin’ around with terrorists’ (This from a person who has frequented the gatherings of a secessionist group. The irony seemed lost on the media). Palin also introduced the specter of the race card by claiming that ‘Obama doesn’t see America the way that you and I do’, a clear reference to his ‘otherness’ or mixed background.
Rarely has any politician delved into negative, personal and slanderous attacks with such glee. It seemed that she was reprising Rush Limbaugh’s 2007 obsession with Obama’s mixed background, calling him a ‘halfrican american’ and doing skits like ‘Barack the magic negro’. She started this line of attack after the McCain campaign telegraphed that they were going to turn the page on the economy and talk about Obama’s ‘associations’.
She took up a few news cycles over the prior weekend while Obama was preparing for the second presidential debate and Biden was attending his mother-in-law’s funeral. Democrats were alarmed at such attacks getting wide publicity on cable networks. Team Obama responded with a counter on Charles Keating, including a 15 minute video, and Obama himself added a passage to his stump speeches in North Carolina and Virginia attacking the ‘turn the page’ line and criticizing McCain for going negative.
His intent was to make clear to the people who was starting this race to the bottom. The purpose of the Keating video was to prevent McCain from controlling a news cycle on a day when both candidates were off the trail.
But the even bigger story than the attacks from the stump was the vitriol from the crowds. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post was among the first to report the inflammatory language used by Palin supporters. Some shouted ‘traitor’, ‘kill him’, ‘terrorist’ among other statements to describe Obama. The rhetoric spilled over to McCain rallies when he went after the Bill Ayers story. By mid-week, the mainstream media was focused on McCain’s crowds more than McCain’s speeches. The national and cable networks all broadcast segments from a McCain town hall in Wisconsin where an angry man said ‘I’m angry!.. and it’s not about the economy!", and proceeded to lash out at Obama with an anti-socialist tirade.
The anger in the McCain crowds continued to boil over when his campaign had raised the Bill Ayers issue and then declined to go after Obama on the matter at the second debate. That caused Obama to express surprise to Charlie Gibson that McCain ‘wouldn’t say it to my face.’. Biden also chimed in, stating that where he grew up, when you had to say something to a guy, you look him in the eye and say it to him. Many television and print media figures started commenting with alarm at the tone of McCain-Palin rallies.
Fears of rioting and violence were mentioned. Politically, the Ayers road seemed to be creating conflicts within the GOP and poll numbers started going south for McCain in the daily trackers as well as state polls. Norm Coleman declared that he was no longer going to run personal attack ads. Ray Lahood called out Palin for her rhetoric. Ed Rollins said that unless John McCain dropped this tactic and focused on the economy, the GOP would lose more Senate and House seats. There were also questions about whether the RNC had enough money to support McCain’s strategy given that the Senate and House Republican committees were basically broke and facing well-financed Democratic counterparts.
Finally, on Friday, McCain pulled back the rhetoric. When one angry questioner expressed concern and fear of an Obama victory because ‘he is an arab’, McCain demurred, and said that Obama is a decent man, a good family man, and that you have nothing to fear from Obama as President. The comments elicited boos from the wingnut crowd but praise from Obama himself and others who saw the comments as an official pull back from the Ayers strategy. John Lewis was having none of it and issued a statement sharply critical of McCain as playing with fire in a way reminiscent of George Wallace and his methods of stoking racist feelings among segregationists. McCain hit back at Lewis but was clearly wounded by the comments of a man who is the symbol of the civil rights movement. McCain demanded that Obama condemn the comments. Obama’s campaign took the opportunity to say that McCain wasn’t George Wallace but what Lewis said about the extremism at McCain-Palin rallies was correct.
Sarah Palin got into trouble as the Alaskan courts rebuffed her efforts to stymie the Troopergate investigation. The report came out on a late Friday, but was devastating in its conclusion that Palin did abuse her power and did violate an Alaskan ethics law in her firing of Public Safety Chief Monegan. The report concluded that her numerous attempts (through the efforts of her husband, herself and other aides) to force Monegan to fire her former brother in law, Mike Wooten were improper. Though many have expressed some disappointment that the Troopergate report hasn’t been a bigger story in the media, since the issuance of the report, Palin’s rhetoric towards Obama has cooled and though she continues to misrepresent Obama’s views on issues in an inflammatory way, her attacks on Obama’s associations and references to his ‘otherness’ have been largely subsided.
III. Barack Obama
Obama started the week in Asheville, NC preparing for the second presidential debate. He spoke to over 20,000 people in western North Carolina. The evidence that Obama is not only competitive but surging in North Carolina is mounting. PPP had Obama +6. Civitas +5 and Rasmussen +1. There are a few polls showing a tie or a slight McCain lead, but the trend line among all polls in the states is towards Obama. Following the debate, Obama spent the remainder of the week camped out in Ohio.
He held large rallies in Dayton, Cincinnati, Chilicotte and Columbus before heading out to Philadelphia to do 4 rallies in about 6 hours in front of 60,000 people. Obama continued to pound away on the issue of the economy, using the stump speech he first outlined in Manchester, New Hampshire and hit McCain for the negative turn his campaign had taken. His speeches took a page out of the book of Franklin Roosevelt, taking note of the precipitous falls in the world stock markets and attempting to project optimism and leadership.
He even worked in a folksy anecdotal story about a visit to a pie shop in rural southern Ohio and how he talked to a die hard conservative and said essentially, ‘why don’t you vote for us just this one time, we can’t be any worse than the Republicans’. He told the story at about 6 or 7 speeches and it seemed to get better each time. The mood was upbeat and Obama seemed increasingly confident of victory. At a fundraiser in Philly, Obama reportedly sounded more upbeat, stating that he was ahead of McCain in VA and in Montana (a state that polls suggest is leaning towards McCain).
IV. About that Debate.
The second presidential debate grabbed an audience of around 60 million people, significantly higher than the first debate. John McCain probably wishes nobody had watched it. The post-debate polls all had Obama winning handily, and by larger margins than he had won the first debate. The format was supposed to favor McCain, but he regressed into banalities (‘my friends’) and into Senate speak about various legislation. He frequently got the names of questioners wrong (effectively parodied on SNL), and looked angry and seemed to flail at Obama. He referred to Obama in a dismissive tone as ‘that one’, which caught everyone’s attention. McCain, despite much pre-debate fan fare, declined to attack Obama personally on the Ayers or other issues of associations. McCain tried to make news with an allegedly new proposal to buy out mortgage loans. However, the proposal, like so many McCain ideas, seemed half-baked, contradictory, and was quickly criticized afterwards by Obama and those on the right.
For Obama’s part, he gave crisp, focused answers, made no real mistakes and reinforced his focus on the economy, his knowledge of the issues, and his presidential temperament. He hit McCain again and again on Iraq, and pushed health care on to the front burner of the issues to be considered by the nation. He criticized McCain’s proposal for treating employer subsidized health care as a taxable event, but came through more clearly on the point that health care ought to be a right.
V. About that Economy.
Despite McCain’s schizophrenic focus on ‘who is Barack Obama?!’, the country was focused on a faltering stock market and an economy that seemed to be more fretful and teetering on the brink than at any time in recent history. One has to go back to 1929 to find a global economy in this bad shape. The IMF stated that the global financial system could be on the brink of a meltdown. Global stock markets led the drop this week, and the US DOW dipped below 8,500, marking a new low and a net decline in the Bush years. The Treasury decided to copy a proposal of the UK to effectively nationalize some banks in order to push more capital into the system and re-stimulate lending and the credit markets.
Obama took the step of urging Secretary Paulson to get more proactive and creative in using the tools given to his office in the balout/rescue package and propose a new set of tax credits and loans to small business. Obama is clearly of the opinion that we need to move to the next phase to stimulate the economy, and that means putting money in the hands of the middle class. In that sense, he can bypass the absence of confidence among banks and rely on the people to bring the world out of the crisis. The people have the money and they are the only ones who can bail out the economy. Leadership seems to be coming from Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK, a former Chancellor of the Excehquer, he boldly stated that the UK government will prop up the banks by capitalizing them and nationalizing them. The EU followed suit and the markets have reacted somewhat positively to the news. Now Paulson says he will follow suit. We are all socialists now, and it’s a good thing.
Analysis
Obama won some important tactical victories this week. First, he consolidated the gains made in the first two debates and has positioned himself as the clear front runner. He has more than 270 electoral votes and his popular vote lead has expanded. Second, and more important, he faced down the McCain ‘kitchen sink’ strategy and won. He exposed the Rovian politics of personal destruction and made McCain pay a real price for running a nasty campaign full of racist and ethnocentric overtones. It is unlikely that McCain or Palin can push the Ayers, Wright, Rezco strategy, or try to claim that Obama is somehow unpatriotic, terrorist friendly or un-american without paying a heavy price. After the VP debate, most Republican observers believed that McCain was behind but that the deficit was surmountable with a strong second debate performance and a negative campaign against Obama. After this week, most Republican observers appear to think that McCain is going to lose. That is a significant change and is telling. As I write this, ABC/WAPO have released a poll showing Obama up +10 (53-43) and that voters overwhelmingly think McCain has been negative and has not focused on the issues. The Obama campaign seems to think the ABC numbers are right. Clearly, McCain has paid a price and lost a week when he had a chance to narrow a gap. Obama’s post-debate bounce did not fade. It is now built into his lead.
The Palindrone is Silenced
Sarah Palin was the blunt instrument with which McCain tried to change the subject. Her attacks and the reactions of the rabid crowds sent chills up the spines of many. She was inciting violence and playing on racial fears. However, more media attention became focused on her tactics and she was forced to tone it down because the strategy wasn’t working and because Troopergate compromised her as a credible candidate. Her negatives skyrocketed last week and she has to be concerned that her future in the Republican Party as a national candidate may be permanently damaged. Democrats will not soon forget the glee with wish she tried to usher in a new era of intolerance and bigotry. We will also not forget the utter, shameless hypocrisy of someone who is friendly with a secessionist political party criticizing the patriotic motives of another candidate. There is no doubt in my mind that she would not have made such statements against a white Democratic candidate who didn’t have a ‘funny name’. When Bush apologist David Brooks calls you ‘a cancer on the Republican Party’ then you know you’ve got problems. Whether she has been used or is using this process to elevate herself, her style of politics was rejected this week.
The last week reminded me of the political environment in Israel in 1995 when Yitzakh Rabin was assassinated at a political rally. Benjamin Netanyahu had inflamed the sentiments of far right religious voters and the campaign rallies became increasingly hyperbolic, with Rabin being the target of epithets like ‘traitor’ etc. The assassination of Rabin was one of the worst evens in Middle East history and it happened because of irresponsibly inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail. I am glad that McCain decided to reverse course on this strategy, but I have no illusions that he did so only because he had no other choice. He was off-message, getting battered in polling, and had clearly lost control of the mob. The GOP mob will continue to preach hate (as evidenced by the ‘monkey’ incident at a Palin rally) but people are watching them.
The Road Ahead for Obama
Obama looked like he had won Ohio this past week. He seemed supremely confident in his rallies and had the sense that Ohio was with him now. He projected even more confidence during his tour of Philadelphia. The optimism, energy and the sense that change is coming has given Democrats a quiet sense of determined elation. Though many people on this site focus on the national tracking polls, at this point the state polls mean a lot more. Obama has recorded double digit leads in every blue state. He is not being threatened anywhere in blue America. He also appears to have secured dominant leads in Virginia, Iowa and Colorado, has led wire to wire in New Mexico, and is clearly over the 270 EV threshold. He has moved into a strong position in Ohio, Florida and Nevada. At this point the true toss-ups in this race are: North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri. There is also a potentially second wave of toss-ups with Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota and Georgia tightening. Arkansas may also start moving towards Obama in these uncertain economic times.
The Third Debate and the Final 3 weeks
Polling will likely narrow at the national level in the final 3 weeks as part of the natural tightening of the race, and the fact that in the final 2 weeks, the race will shift to a referendum on whether Obama is ready for the job. McCain’s task is to raise more and more questions about Obama between now and election day. In the 3rd debate, I would look for McCain to ask the rhetorical question ‘Who is the real Barack Obama?’ He will try to assert contrasts between campaign promises (rhetoric) and his voting record. There is a possibility that he will make a reference to Ayers to fire up the base, which is despondent. However, that appears less likely given the feedback he has received from other Republicans. That angle will be left to surrogates. The aim will be to paint Obama as a tax and spend liberal, and also weak on national security. That theme will be picked up on the stump in the remaining weeks. McCain will likely get more media attention because he will cast himself as the underdog and the media likes to hype comebacks even when they are not realistic. Therefore, I think some tracking polls will show tightening, as they tend to overreact to media/news cycles. The challenge for McCain is whether he can assert his argument in broad strokes and avoid the pitfalls of Senate speak. My guess is no. He has been an undisciplined campaigner and debater, and I doubt he will change much of what he has done. I think he will be a bit calmer, though, because he may have regained some of his lost reputation when he said words of praise for Obama against the will of his supporters last Friday in Minnesota.
Obama’s first objective is to have a strong third debate. This means getting style and demeanor right and also being very substantive. Bob Schieffer is going to press the candidates a bit on specifics, and Obama will have to make sure that he is sufficiently responsive but doesn’t concede too much to Schieffer. He has done a good job of standing his ground in these debates so far, so I don’t expect anything to change. The debates will favor Obama because they will invariably be issues focused and McCain simply doesn’t have anything to offer that the people want to hear. If Obama continues with the same approach of looking presidential and substantive while stiff-arming McCain at every turn, then he should win this debate by similar margins to the first two.
Following the debate, Obama should have 2 news cycles of good press and probably a slight boost in some tracking polls into the weekend.
At that point, Obama can shorten the race to basically 2 weeks. He will have to do multiple rallies to limit McCain’s press coverage, stay focused on the issues and make sure that the GOTV machine does its job. He should continue to step up the ad war and prevent McCain from getting a vacuum to make his case. He seems to be doing that with the purchase of segments of network news time during the final week. As far as campaign visits are concerned, Obama should simply nail down the states that will get him over the 270 EV threshold: Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Florida. He will also likely make stops in Nevada, New Mexico, Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina to protect other battlegrounds where he has posted a lead and keep the pressure on McCain.
In looking at this race, though the historical trend is for the polls to tighten towards election day, I don’t think there will be significant tightening that will affect the end result. Even when Bill Clinton had a 14 point lead at this point in 1992 narrow to 5.5 on election day, he still won with over 350 EVs. In this election, McCain doesn’t have the money or ground game to compete with Obama in the final weeks. He has a significant enthusiasm gap that will not close, and that likely affect turnout, which should skew the final numbers to Obama. Does anyone really believe that McCain will get as many votes in red counties as Bush did? Does anyone not believe that Obama will surpass Kerry’s vote total in red and blue counties? McCain’s age has also showed in this race as he hasn’t done nearly as many events as Obama and Biden combined and always seems to take weekends off. Palin has been a disaster as a campaigner as she is unable to advocate for McCain without getting herself into trouble for false, inane or inflammatory statements.
An additional challenge for McCain is that there are not enough states where RNC and McCain interests overlap to incent the RNC to add real money to compete. There are no seriously contested Senate seats in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico or Virginia. Obama is way ahead in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oregon. Only Colorado shows a convergence of interests, but the latest PPP poll indicates that McCain can’t win there given how well Obama is doing among white voters and has locked up the Hispanic and black vote. There is more overlap with House races, but the agenda of House Republican candidates is different from that of McCain.
Moreover, McCain will find it hard to make his case in an environment when congressional, state and ballot races are heating up. The cost of ad time will increase, and there can be little doubt that ballot measures in some states will gain more interest than McCain’s struggling campaign.
I look for Obama to have a strong final debate performance and to ride the momentum into the weekend.