The respected St. Petersburg Times has been keeping tabs on a group of Tampa swing voters and it finds them now breaking heavily for Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama — and GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate has a lot to do with it.
That mirrors an NBC poll that shows Palin is now clearly a drag on the McCain ticket. The Times reports:
Two months ago, the undecided voters convened for a focus group at the St. Petersburg Times were decidedly antagonistic toward Barack Obama and in several cases leaning toward McCain. Today, just one of the 11 voters is backing McCain, nine expect to vote for Obama, and one remains torn.
Sarah Palin did most of the work of pushing them to the Democrat, but Obama also has managed to ease their doubts.
“I’ve felt for a long time that the Republican Party has been captured by people who are too far (in) the extremes — the religious right, the neo-cons. I had great hopes that I could see in McCain somebody who was different. I don’t see that anymore,” said Republican retired military officer Donn Spegal, 80, of Tierra Verde.
“You want several things out of a president, and I think Obama has potential. Intelligence is the first one, obvious love of country and dedication. He must be a pragmatist. We haven’t had enough pragmatism, and I think Obama shows that.”
The Times notes that the Presidential race in Florida is incredibly close so this group may not mirror how the election will go. But, the paper point out, “over three sessions of informal discussions about the election, many of the participants took remarkably similar journeys to reaching the conclusion that Obama was their candidate. ”
MSNBC’s First Read today notes that Palin has become a huge problem for McCain on several political fronts, which is reflected in a poll. And this is most likely due to several reasons, MSNBC reports:
First, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann note McCain’s increasing problem with independent voters:
If a political observer jumped into a time machine and traveled from January 2008 to today, he might be startled to see McCain’s current performance among independents in the latest NBC/WSJ poll. He trails Obama here by 12 points, 49%-37%. What’s striking (and ironic) is that McCain’s political brand has been forged by his stature with independents — and it’s what always made him the strongest Republican to run in this cycle. Conversely, McCain is doing very well with the GOP base in the poll. He’s winning handily among evangelicals, small town/rural voters, and folks in the South. Did McCain make a miscalculation by trying to please the base — with Palin, taxes, abortion, judges — instead of trying to win the middle? As NBC/WSJ co-pollster Peter Hart (D) puts it, “If you don’t win the middle in America, you don’t win the election.” If there is an upside to McCain’s focus on the base, it’s that it may prevent any electoral landslide.
As we’ve noted here, McCain’s campaign has been seemingly-geared since the convention to play to the GOP’s conservative base that’s attuned to what I have called the “talk radio political culture.” In its content, style, and use of language the McCain campaign has been the kind of Lee Atwater/Karl Rove style “base mobilization” campaign that turns off many independent voters who — regardless of policy differences (independent voters are not monolithic) — have generally wanted a high tone campaign focused on a serious discussion of issues.
And then there is Palin’s impact on independent voters. MSNBC’s take on it buttresses the Times’ findings:
Speaking of Palin, her numbers have plummeted in our poll. For the first time, she has a net-negative fav/unfav rating (38%-47%), the only principal to carry that distinction. What’s more, 55% think she’s unqualified to serve as president if the need arises, which is a troublesome number given McCain’s age. (Have worries about McCain’s age risen because of Palin? Seems to be the case). In fact, her qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about a McCain presidency — ahead of continuing Bush’s policies. (Who would have ever thought that Palin would be a bigger problem for McCain than Bush would?) And while inexperience turns out to be voters’ top concern about an Obama presidency, it’s probably not helpful to the McCain camp that inexperience is now a liability for its ticket, too.
If these poll numbers weren’t bad enough for Palin, now comes a Politico report noting that the RNC spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize her at high-end stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue — a story that could further add to the perception that Palin isn’t a serious candidate. The campaign released a statement last night that seemed to confirm the report: “With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” A few questions here from NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: Did the campaign announce that she was donating to clothes to charity because there’s a potential tax problem here? And is Palin permitted to accept these kinds of gifts under Alaska ethics laws?
On the Today Show this morning, NBC’s Todd says Palin’s recent smash appearance on Saturday Night Live was a huge mistake because, on the show, she played into her emerging political stereotype.
Those specifics aside, McCain’s pick of Palin, from the outset of her convention speech to her ‘palling around with terrorists’ comments, suggested that he had opted for more of a Spiro Agnew pick than a Dan Quayle (bland), Dick Cheney (gravitas and experience) or George H.W. Bush (steadiness).
Palin will likely be a key contender for the GOP nomination in 2012 if McCain loses. But in both her resume and her polarizing, hot-button, talk-radio style political rhetoric, she is the antithesis of the kind of person many independent voters hoped McCain would pick as his Veep to run on his ticket — or to take over for him if necessary in the Oval office.
If McCain wins, it’ll be considered a masterful selection because it rallied his base. If McCain loses, it’ll be pointed to as due to his bad judgment in terms of someone to hold the office and someone who could help his ticket in areas where it needed to be helped.
The bottom line: if the Times group and MSNBC poll reflect a trend (or on a smaller scale if the evolution of many writers on this site who are independent voters or registered Republicans who have long sympathized with McCain and were pleased to see him get the nomination reflect a trend) McCain is losing the middle.
Which means that if he wins he’ll win largely by securing the GOP’s smaller political base and having peeled some voters away from the middle. He would assume office with some Americans bitter over the tactics and rhetoric used to peel those middle voters away — and would not have a strong safety net of support if he runs into trouble.
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.