The bounce is officially over. The selection of Sarah Palin was like a little burst of nitro that temporarily blasted McCain into the lead, but now cripples his ability to keep pace through the back stretch. We still need to harvest the post-bounce state polls to get a good sense of where the race is, but the early signals suggest that the race is roughly where it was before the conventions. The selection of Palin definitely took Alaska off the battleground list and there are signs in may have moved states like Montana and North Dakota out of contention (although, I wouldn’t be so sure). McCain now enjoys a healthy lead in the South, but trails badly in every other region of the country. Recent polls show the race deadlocked in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Those are all states that McCain cannot afford to lose. Without question, Obama is currently sitting in a better position.
Looking forward, Palin remains McCain’s biggest liability. Never again will she be able to give him an adrenaline boost. Unhelpful news trickles out of Alaska every single day and there is no prospect of a let up. I watched Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity tonight, and she is simply unprepared to excel in even the most softball interview conceivable. McCain will have to severely curtail her media availability.
He likes to campaign with her because he draws bigger, more energetic crowds, and because it allows him to step in and save her when she gets in tight spots. But, not only is this an untenable sign of weakness, it prevents them from covering much territory. Tomorrow, for example, McCain and Palin will appear in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Green Bay, Wisconsin. But Barack Obama will be in Española, New Mexico, Michelle Obama will be in Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina, and Joe Biden will appear on Good Morning America before campaigning in Canton and Youngstown, Ohio.
That is five stops to two, and McCain/Palin cannot afford to get beat like that day after day after day. McCain is horribly lost whenever the subject of the economy comes to the fore, and his empty populist rhetoric is easily refuted and made to look ridiculous even by a lazy press. When this election is over, the right-wing is going to complain that the media was horribly biased against their candidate, but the reality is that McCain spurned his love affair with the press in favor of an unvetted and unprepared running mate. And he has forsaken any pretext of truth-telling. If Obama had declared war on the press and then proceeded to tell an endless litany of lies, the press would have treated him even worse.
That this election is still close is a testament to both the conservative nature of American society and the difficulty a black man has in winning the presidency in a white majority county. To my knowledge, that feat has never been accomplished anywhere in the world. Until now, my friends. Until now.
I couldn’t agree more. McCain has seen all the positives that he is going to see from the Palin pick, and from now on anything new from her will be negative. And it’s not just that she has no f-ing clue about anything. It’s also that, let’s face it, she is just not a very nice person.
I find it strange that the Obama campaign has not used some of the strongest economic arguments it could use against McCain. Like the fact that McCain wants to tax employer-based healthcare benefits as income. Jesus, when folks get the idea that McCain is going to threaten their employer-based healthcare, they are going to freak out. This issue has not even been mentioned in the campaign.
I think it has been in press releases and other outlets. The McCain camp has shot back against the health care tax accusations, saying that their rebate would more than cover the tax increase. But if the tax increase causes companies to drop employer-provided health care (as mine does), it screws people big time.
I think the Obama camp is very patient, saving some of their best jabs for later. Every week is an eternity, for all we know the bank failures will seem like ancient history next week as we move on to some other bogus issue or debate speculation.
Better to save the best hits for October.
It may happen that the economic cataclysm blows everything apart including the campaigns of McCain and Palin both. A few more maladroit comments by the new Herbert Hoover may utterly demolish any chances for a Republican victory in November. Wait till the electorate discovers that McCain is for taxing health insurance benefits. Kind of matches Palin’s idea of having victims pay for their rape analysis kits.
Total Republican insensitivity to the needs of the common man and woman. As Harry Truman used to say, want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.
He hasn’t won yet.
There’s the October Surprise. All Bush has to do is say we hit a target with OBL in it a few days before the election.
They could also go with some explosive false accusation.
There’s always voter fraud.
There’s more.
But if it was another negative for Palin, awesome. I’m sure Hannity didn’t ask any remotely difficult questions, and probably stepped in for her if he thought she was having difficult. Handing holding meets training wheels meets Autopia at Disneyland.
At this point McCain is hoping for a big scary terrorist incident, maybe another Bin Laden tape a few days before the election, or hopes that Rev. Wright Redux might shake things up next month. I can’t really see the new orgs going crazy over Wright like they did before, although of course they would replay any ads containing him especially if they are from the McCain camp or the RNC.
The really outrageous ads will come from the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Issues Project. I wish we could get started rat-fucking the ratfuckers, or swift-boating the swiftboaters. The Obama camp did a pretty good job destroying Jerome Corsi this time around, hopefully they are ready to rip apart those two groups (with our help).
The campaign has to be careful with taking down these authors. Andrew Sullivan clued me in to one episode last week that could cause problems.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/disappointing.html
Let them have their say, then rip them up. Not beforehand.
The fundamentals of the Obama campaign are strong: us.
Question:
So where are Richardson, Dodd, Kerry and the Clintons? We need EVERYONE out there campaigning their asses off for Obama.
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From your New York Times link:
Republicans 70% Sarah Palin
Democrats 27% Joe Biden
Nearly 70 percent of Mr. McCain’s supporters said they were enthusiastic about the selection of Ms. Palin; 27 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters said they were enthusiastic about the selection of Mr. Biden.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."That is five stops to two
And interestingly – two of those stops are Michelle Obama’s. Cindy McCain isn’t out stumping for her husband from what I’ve seen. Though an interesting though occurs – most of the pre-Palin McCain rallies I saw on teevee had his wife standing at his side. Now with Palin there, his wife seems to be out of the picture more often than not. I don’t know if she’s still there or if she’s gone, but she doesn’t seem to be in the shot on the teevee as much as she was before. Weird.
And while we’re on the subject of candidate spouses – why not have Todd Palin out there stumping. It sounds like he was intimately involved in the business of governing up in Alaska at various points, after all…
I tend to think of her appearance much like the Ebola fever. A pungent hot fever that kills quickly and generally takes out those around it as well.
It’s good that someone acknowledges that America is a conservative country. That doesn’t mean we can’t move the ball left, but knowing where you’re starting is far far more efficient.