So was Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s week of playing defensive merely a little glitch because he’s running in a year when the mounting ills traced to the Bush administration seemingly multiply by the day? The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman, in the political quote of the day, warns that Obama and the Democrats may be in greater trouble than they think:
The big question, however, is whether Americans in 2008 will vote their wallets and pocketbooks – assigning blame, as Fair sees it, to the incumbent party’s nominee – or whether they will continue to confound conventional wisdom, as they have so often in this campaign season.
Indeed, one of the key reasons for [Republican Senator John] McCain’s recent barrage of attacks on Obama is his urgent need to change the traditional paradigm. His strategists are well aware that the sour economy hampers their prospects, especially since McCain is widely perceived in the polls as ideologically sympatico with the incumbent president of his own party; and since McCain himself has admitted that “the issue of economics is not something I have understood as well as I should.”
Hence his need to make the voters focus on something besides economic anxiety. The obvious alternative – for a McCain attack team now dominated by Karl Rove alumni – is to shred the opponent’s persona…and suggest, for example, that Obama is merely an uppity arrogant airhead celebrity who wants to lose a war.
So should the Democrats and Obama supporters breathe a sigh of relief now that the week is over and they head into the convention, with a tough new Obama ad on energy policy blasting McCain’s ties to oil interests? After all, most of the news — particularly financial news — isn’t good for the GOP, and the Democrats are expected to win seats in Congress. Polman, in effect, says in your dreams. — the worst is likely yet to come.
And that’s just for starters. It’s August now, the traditional Democratic disaster month. Michael Dukakis was destroyed in August ’88, when the GOP painted him as a water-polluting, insufficiently flag-waving, rapist-enabling wussy; his response at the time was zilch, because he refused to believe that voters would buy the caricatures. They did. And 16 years later, in August ’04, John Kerry was transformed by the Swift Boaters from war hero to fraud; his response at the time was to embark on a wind-surfing vacation. His people said virtually nothing for several weeks, because they refused to believe that voters would buy the caricature. They did.
Obama now faces many potential dog day afternoons. His current line is that he is “disappointed” in McCain for launching such attacks, but I doubt that a mournful sigh is sufficient to stop further shelling from the McCain war room. Clearly he will need stronger weaponry if he wants to survive the ides of August. Contrary to what some of the economic forecasters believe, I find it hard to imagine, in this unconventional campaign season, that swing voters will tilt Democratic merely because of the sluggish quarterly growth rates in the GDP.
Read his article in full.
And that’s the dilemma that campaigns — and Americans who seek a shift in how we conduct our personality-oriented seek-and-destroy Presidential campaigns — face. These kinds of campaigns, with their synergistic tie-ins to sound bite mantras, imagery-stereotypes, slogans and attitudes quickly picked up by partisans via reinforcement on talk and cable opinion shows and the Internet, do work.
As Polman notes, the Democrats continually find themselves flat-footed and out of sync when hit by a barrage of GOP attacks, even if they run in years when there’s massive pundit hype about how THIS will be the Democrats’ year.
The question: do you play the game on the playing field where the game is conducted and officially-decided and play by the rules that teams use, or do you pick up and move to play the game on a field you choose by your own rules — while the other side is scoring points on the official playing field where the game is officially-decided?
The Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey argues that Obama is coming under fire from pundits for being overconfident because he’s acting Presidential. Fair enough.
But that may not be what winning Presidential campaigns require. President Dewey, President Dukakis, and President Kerry found that out. There’s even news that McCain is going to wait to let Obama pick his Vice President first (code words: so the Veep can come under fierce attack or mockery and McCain can then counter the selection).
One bit of conventional wisdom via critics is that Obama won’t be truly tested for President until he spends some time responding to a crisis in the Oval Office.
Actually, his first test will come this month to see how he, his campaign team and the often-politically-outfoxed Democrats, respond to the onslaught that is about to come.
Will this August be political as well as TV re-run season?
UPDATE: More bad polling news for Obama. Rasmussen is reporting a shift:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.
This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3 (see recent daily results). Tracking Polls are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day.
A week ago today, Obama had a three-percentage point lead and the candidates were even among unaffiliated voters. Today, McCain leads 52% to 37% among unaffiliateds.
We’ve repeatedly said here that a single poll is not as significant as a trend. Between this and the Gallup Daily tracking poll which basically puts the race as a dead heat, we are seeing a trend. The McCain campaign is now on the ascent; the Obama campaign is on the descent. Will this apparent trend continue?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.