How McCain Has Tightened the Race
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, PollsSo, John McCain has pulled ahead in the most recent monthly Reuters / Zogby poll. Why? I think there are two reasons.
The lesser reason first: The crisis in Georgia brought the whole “3 a.m. phone call†scenario into clear focus. Obama initially seemed like he just wished the situation would go away. McCain took the matter head-on. Whether or not McCain’s approach is the best doesn’t really matter. What I think matters to many voters is that he seemed eager and willing to act decisively while Obama was on vacation in Hawaii. Bad timing for that vacation.
Now, the major reason: The celebrity attack ads have had some effect because they turn Obama’s greatest strength, his charisma, into a liability. The breathless media coverage of Obama’s foreign tour made him look presumptuous. The Berlin crowd in particular made him look more like an international rock star than a man you can trust with serious matters (not saying that’s an accurate portrayal, just an easy perception for some voters to come away with).
Obama overplayed his celebrity and McCain hit him on it. It doesn’t even matter that McCain himself has eagerly cultivated celebrity for years – it matters that McCain has positioned himself as the “serious†candidate and is making Obama seem like a lightweight.
Clinton tried the same “he’s not ready†attack against Obama, but the Democratic nomination process is as much about ground game as it is about messaging and Clinton failed in the trenches. McCain doesn’t have to work the trenches to score well in these polls.
Nevertheless, I expect Obama to close the gap and even regain the lead. One of the interesting factoids of the Zogby poll is that only 74% of Democrats are supporting Obama (a 9 percent drop from last month) as compared to 81% of Republicans who support McCain. I think Obama has a lot better chance of rallying cautious Democrats who worry about his credentials than McCain does in rallying Republicans who view him as an apostate.
Time will tell…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am
[...] for one thing, I mostly agree with the analyst at Donklephant who says this: The lesser reason first: The crisis in Georgia brought the whole “3 a.m. phone call†scenario [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
“One of the interesting factoids of the Zogby poll is that only 74% of Democrats are supporting Obama (a 9 percent drop from last month) as compared to 81% of Republicans who support McCain. I think Obama has a lot better chance of rallying cautious Democrats who worry about his credentials than McCain does in rallying Republicans who view him as an apostate.”
I’m not sure. The Republicans always seem more unified than the Democrats. Perhaps it’s the price you pay for being the current “big tent” party.
Regardless, I’m really disappointed with the Obama campaign’s lame attempts at countering McCain’s attacks, as I was certain the Democrats had learned a few things after 2004–namely that it’s exceedingly difficult to win a campaign if you’re always on the defensive, and that’s just what the Rovian school of dirty campaigning aims to achieve. After being HAMMERED for the past 10 days, his campaign releases a risible “takes on to know one” styled ad asserting that McCain is the true “celebrity.” It looks like an insincere reflexive reaction and allows the Republicans to control the narrative and subjects framing the election and the media’s coverage of it.
When the republicans accuse John Kerry and Obama of being flip-floppers and Obama of being a celebrity, they’re basically just grabbing a negative characteristic every presidential candidate is guilty of, including the republican candidate, and repeating it ad nauseum and with passionate conviction. Strangely, this strategy seems to fool enough undecided voters who don’t pay much attention to politics that ONLY the accused candidate is guilty of the crime–that the accuser is innocent. The Obama campaign should respond in kind by relentlessly framing McCain as a hypocrite–”hypocrite” being the key word that must be repeated over and over. McCain’s certainly given them enough quotes in the past two years that conflict with previous quotes and votes in the senate. It would also help to undercut his greatest strength–the perception that he’s a “straight talker.” Unlike Roves smears, the Obama campaign wouldn’t even have to fabricate the information it uses to attack McCain insofar as that line of attack would go.
Unless Obama’s campaign quickly learns how to EFFECTIVELY counterattack, I don’t see much chance of a victory. That Obama’s fall in the polls have been so dramatic and so quick following a few dirty jabs by the McCain camp gives the Illinois senator’s presidential bid the aura of a house of cards. How effective will the attacks be when the McCain camp REALLY takes off the gloves in September and October?
Furthermore, don’t expect the Democratic convention to be a game changer for Obama; if I remember correctly, Kerry only received a slight bounce (around 3 points) from the convention in 2004. With the current round the clock coverage of politics and the knowledge of the party’s nominee months before the convention, the conventions serve little purpose and are no longer a source of excitement. Obama might get a 2-3 point bounce, but it will most likely prove ephemeral.
Sorry for the length of the post–I should probably get my own blog if I’m going to rant like that.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
Isn’t it funny how all of a sudden someone is no longer posting DAYLY POLLS? For months, everday we’d get a new poll number (you know, so that we could chart the “trends” of Obama leading) — Of course, the polls are meaningless now….