Published on DickMorris.com on June 24, 2008.
It’s been a rough two weeks for Barack Obama, but his poll numbers remain strong and unchanged. Is he a Teflon candidate?
Consider what’s happened since he clinched the Democratic nomination and Hillary “suspended” her campaign:
• Obama flip flopped on his pledge to spurn private contributions and finance his campaign publicly – as long as his opponent did likewise. McCain said he’s willing and Obama flipped and said he’s not.
• The Democratic candidate was caught flat footed by the sudden spike in oil prices and even defended their high level, lamenting only that we had not been given a period of time to make a “gradual adjustment” to the higher price.
• McCain urged off-shore drilling, which Americans support, according to Rasmussen’s polling, by 70-19, while Obama said no.
• Obama urged that we give foreign terror suspects constitutional rights, including habeas corpus, and even implied that if we caught bin Laden, that’s how he should be treated.
• The head of the commission Obama set up to vet Vice Presidential candidates, Jim Johnson, had to resign after he was found to have gotten millions in sweetheart loans from Countrywide, the mortgage giant that is at the heart of the subprime scandal.
But you’d never know it from the polls. Rasmussen has Obama ahead by four, pretty much where he’s been for two weeks, and Newsweek showed him ahead by fifteen points.
How is Obama doing it? He’s got a defensive strategy based on jujitsu – using his enemies’ strength against him. Obama’s tormentors on the right keep invoking the crazy remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former terrorist William Ayers to convince people that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent, sent to seduce and destroy our democracy from within. Some wonder if he is really a Muslim masquerading as a Christian.
The more these extreme charges are leveled against the Democratic nominee, the less attention we focus on the very real radical positions that he has taken, grounds enough for a vote against him. The right is so busy pushing Wright and Ayers that it doesn’t have time to focus on what doubling the capital gains tax would do to the country or what weakening the Patriot Act would do to national security. In our new book, Fleeced, we try to spell out the policies that Obama espouses and call attention to the danger they represent. His economic programs would land us in a deep and long recession as he drove capital out by doubling the tax on it. His health care policies would pay for federally subsidized insurance for 12 million illegal immigrants, forcing the rest of us to wait in line for our health care – and often to be denied needed procedures because of “objective criteria” applied by federal regulators.
His comments about forcing anti-terror investigators to proceed as would regular criminal prosecutors ignores the fact that we do not seek to prosecute, but only to prevent terror attacks, and would burden our homeland security people, slowing them down so we get hit again.
There is so much in Obama’s record to criticize, and the right does him a service by vilifying him. You don’t have to believe that he is the Manchurian Candidate to realize that he would be way too liberal as a president.
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Dick: The liberal, as you so describe Obama, holds that he is true to America when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) Obama greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man’s invitation to take a walk. And Obama acts in the dog’s way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that no one has ever traverse, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. Obama will leave a crazy trail behind him, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party line he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover te “skunks.” And the thing about the liberal Obama, well it is sort of a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be “liberal.”Good or bad, I believe he will be elected President…….and the proof will be in the pudding.
With so much insight and knowledge that you have, I don’t understand why you would not consider running for office….I think you are missing your “calling.”
Dear Mr. Morris,
I believe this is a year where the political party (between the key two) matters to a point analysis, such as yours, may be prone to underestimate their importance.
In the past (roughly 75 years), each time this country went into an election year faced with an unpopular war and/or depressed economy, the incumbent political party did not win the White House.
In 1932, the issues included the Great Depression and Prohibition. Incumbent was Republican Herbert Hoover, who faced Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt—and lost the election (472-59).
In 1952, Korean War was the top issue and incumbent was Democratic Harry Truman. So unpopular, Truman chose not to run for re-election. Adlai Stevenson was the party’s nomination—and when Election Day came, Stevenson not only lost (442-89) to Republican challenger Dwight Eisenhower, he failed to carry his home state of Illinois.
In 1968, Vietnam War was the top issue. Democratic president Lyndon Johnson announced in March he would not seek nor accept his party’s nomination. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the embattled nomination (over a June-assassinated Robert Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy)—and he faced Eisenhower’s No. 2, Richard Nixon. Third party candidate George Wallace made matters complicated and ultimately won five states—including his own, Alabama. But it was Nixon and the GOP who prevailed (Nixon: 301; Humphrey: 191; Wallace: 46).
In 1980, Democratic president Jimmy Carter had inflation crippling his chances of re-election—and once former actor and California governor Ronald Reagan burst on the scene, won the GOP’s nomination, it was obvious. Result: Reagan, 489; Carter: 49.
In 1992, Republican Commander in Chief George Bush became the first incumbent of his party defeated on Election Day since 1932 Herbert Hoover, as he faced not one but two opponents: Democratic challenger and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, and independent business tycoon H. Ross Perot. Bush was trying to overcome a ression and, while Perot won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote (and no electoral votes), it was Clinton who kicked butt, with 370 electoral votes to Bush’s 168.
I believe this historical pattern will continue in 2008, where he have a crackling combination of a disastrous economy and the Iraq War. And I believe people are angry with the Republican Party that it will be too overwhelming for U.S. Senator John McCain to overcome — and that the next, 44th president of the United States will be Senator Barack Obama.
—DS0816
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