Nate Silver Offers Cautionary Tale in LA Times
Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 08:44:18 AM PDT
In an op-ed piece in today's LA Times, Nate Silver, as usual, offers a trenchant analysis of the current political lay of the land. His analysis is reassuring in the face of tightening national horse race polls, but it also offers a cautionary tale about the future course of the Obama campaign.
Silver offers a persuasive argument as to why Obama is not establishing a double digit lead despite the generic Dem party ID lead of roughly that margin. According to Silver, the Dems start w/ a structural disadvantage in that, since 1976, while GOP nominees have been supported by 87% of self-identified Goopers, our nominees have only been supported by 80% of self-described Dems. Siver also addresses McCain's ability, thus far, to define himself as a "moderate."
In the money quote of the piece, Silver states:
But neither McCain nor Obama can be considered a generic candidate, because both enjoy strong appeal among independent voters. This is particularly the case for McCain, who has largely managed to avoid the stigma attached to the tarnished Republican brand. In a recent poll conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, only 31% of voters had a favorable view of the Republican Party, compared with 48% who held a negative one. But McCain's numbers were nearly the reverse: 42% viewed him positively, against 30% unfavorably.
How has McCain done it? It has mostly to do with his reputation as a moderate. In that same NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21% of voters said they viewed McCain as "very conservative," while 34% pegged him as a moderate. As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats.
This excerpt summarizes the one major flaw in the Obama campaign to date. We all respect the amazing job that Team Obama has done to get a largely unknown junior senator to this point. Lately, however, there has been an inability to get the campaign to the next level. In particular, there really has been little attempt to impose some truth in advertising on the McCain candidacy.
As an above-the-fold story on the FP of today's NYT notes, the housing bubble's deflation still has a ways to go. As Krugman notes on the op-ed page, the ongoing economic crisis cannot be expected to ease any time soon. Less than 1 month ago, however, McCain's (then) top economic adviser stated in an on the record interiew that the problem is all in our heads:
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."
"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years
There is enough political gold in those 3 paragraphs to last James Carville to election day. If a top adviser to Obama on any issue made similarly damaging comments, Team McCain's ads highlighting those comments would be more ubiquitous than Viagra promos. Millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes, and Phil Gramm says that they're "whiners?" Forget Carville--Shrum would be able to make massive amounts of political hay from those comments.
I am unaware of a single ad that Team Obama has cut highlighting Gramm's comments. I know for a fact that Gramm never came close to becoming the household name that Rev. Wright became in the primaries. McCain disavowed the comments, and the story essentially died after a couple of news cycles.
Fortunately, that blown opportunity was not the last one that will present itself to Team Obama. McCain can't stop himself from tripping over his own tongue. He's essentially a less appealing (and less voluble) Joe Biden. He will offer future chances (plural) for Team Obama to negatively define him.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be that much evidence that Team Obama is particularly concerned about defining McCain. While their primary focus should be on defining their own candidate, it's not an either/or proposition. At this point, they should be good enough at multitasking to work at defining McCain, too.
As several FP posters noted here yesterday, we have a chance for a victory this fall that will redefine the prevailing landscape a la 1932 or 1980. Silver's column, however, raises serious questions about whether that redefinition will occur w/o some redefinition of McCain. If swing voters perceive McCain as an independent moderate rather than the oppportunistic GOP hack that he really is, this election will, ultimately, prove to be much closer than it needs to be.
It's way past time for Team Obama to start the redefinition process.
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