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.
