Today (Thursday, October 23rd), tomorrow, and the weekend are the last chance McCain has to get back into this race. To understand why, let’s briefly recap what’s happened since the conventions.
McCain left the back-to-back conventions with a lead for the first time in the presidential race. His strength was fueled by his designation of Sarah Palin and the enthusiasm she aroused in the Republican base. The Democrats, caught off guard, attacked her viciously which only reinforced the perception of a woman being victimized by a sexist left.
Then McCain lost the first two debates. Regardless of what observers think happened (we thought he lost the first and won the second), the fact is that his poll numbers deteriorated after each performance. The financial crisis extinguished any lead McCain may have had exacerbated by what must be seen, in hindsight, as the biggest mistake of his campaign - his decision to “suspend” his campaign and return to Washington to work on the bailout. McCain’s subsequent docile support for the package, earmarks and all, destroyed the perception he had carefully built during his convention and subsequently of independence from Bush and of a populist antipathy to greedy Wall Street barons.
As a result of the debates, the crisis, and McCain’s ineptitude, Obama surged to a lead of 7-9 points around October 13th.
Then, amazingly, McCain won the third debate. Using a populist appeal and fighting hard, he echoed the complaints of Joe the Plumber against Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around.” From Wednesday, October 15 through Saturday, October 18th, McCain sliced the Obama lead to five points - an average of all the polling.
But the effect of the debate began to wear off on Sunday, October 19th and McCain began to fall back again. By now, Obama has an average lead of 7.2 points, according to realclearpolitics.com. (The AP poll showing a dead heat is the only one to show such data, unfortunately).
Much of Obama’s rise this week has been due to his domination of the paid advertising. With his coffers swollen by $150 million raised in September, he can buy any available advertising time. But McCain has considerable resources at his disposal as well. For the week that started this past Tuesday, October 21st, McCain is running about four ads to every five that Obama airs in swing states.
(Technically, McCain is airing about 2500 household rating points per week as against Obama’s 3300. One household rating point means that one percent of the households are watching the ad. So 2500 points in a given week suggests that each household is seeing about 25 ads per week, or about four each day. While Obama is spending more money, the difference between seeing four McCain ads and five Obama spots each day is not significant.)
And, starting on Monday of this week, McCain began running an attack ad specifically aimed at the issues first raised by Joe the Plumber. Showing footage of his chat with Obama, the McCain ad hammers home the tax issue, noting that Obama’s so-called tax cut for 100 million Americans is really a welfare check for the half of them who pay no taxes. The ad is hard hitting and effective. More importantly, it is running in the clear without other McCain media to clutter up the message.
So McCain has his best ad on his best issue with as close to financial parity with Obama as he is likely to get. If, in these circumstances, he cannot gain ground during the next few days, the race will be functionally over. But if the Republicans can get traction, it could become a competitive contest again.
Godspeed John McCain.
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Comments
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It is interesting to me that while the majority of us live somewhere in the middle between left and right we oscillate between electing the very right and now it appears the very left. I suppose at least that way the majority of us will always have something to bitch about.
Let us hope that at the very least we will get a competent administration this time.
Great article Dick. One additional point: during the Democratic primary, you rightfully pointed out the Clinton’s race-baiting strategy, i.e. Bill saying “fairytale” and “Jesse Jackson” and Hillary saing “LBJ not MLK on civil rights.” These were designed to be subtle comments to provoke a white racist backlash and they backfired. Obama pivoted and turned the issue into a referendum on core American values of tolerence, inclusion, and equality. He made it so that a vote for Hillary was a vote for bigotry, at least as a subtext for independants.
The same issue is at play in the general election. McCain-Palin have also tried race-baiting by innuendo (though not subtle at all). “Ayers, Palling around with terrorists, Muslim, Arab, Hussein, Socialist, doesn’t see America as we do, real America, pro-American Americans, etc.” This is all code for “strange black man you can’t trust.”
Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama was beautifully worded and 100x more patriotic and “real American” than anything McCain or Palin have ever said. He mentioned the gallant 20-year solider who won the purple heart and bronze star, died in Iraq and, oh by the way, happens to be Muslim. The picture he painted is worth at least 1,000 words. There are 12k Mulsim soldiers serving in the U.S. Armed Forces and many have won service medals and laid down their lives in the cause of Liberty.
What could be more pro-American than that? What could be more core to American values than standing up for religious freedom, for equality, for minority rights.
In comparison to these timeless values, the values of the founding fathers, of Lincoln, of MLK, etc. McCain and Palin’s themes seem petty, even base and bigoted.
This is the key subtext driving the elections. Obama has turned the choice into one of good (freedom, liberty, equality, hope) vs. evil (bigotry, ignorance, hatred).
For this reason Obama is going to win in an historic landslide no matter what McCain comes up with in the next two weeks.
It is interesting that although most of us are in the middle we oscillate between electing the extreme right and now it appears the extreme left. Oh well, at least the majority of us will have something to bitch about.
Dick: The race is over……his choice of Palin is not being demonstrated as victimization of woman, but rather a “rogue” going wild. His choice of Palin is going to be the McCain’s campaign worst nightmare…..it want even compare to his POW experiences.