James E. Campbell on The 2008 Election in Perspective: The Unexpected Wall Street Meltdown Election
Some political analysts have interpreted the 2008 presidential election as an ordinary retrospective election. With a very unpopular Republican incumbent presiding over unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a weak economy, 2008 appeared to be a Democratic year.
As the often insightful Larry Sabato put it in his recent essay, “any mainstream Democratic candidate was destined to win in 2008.” He rejects the alternative interpretation that “the election’s key event was the mid-September financial meltdown; that somehow had this never happened McCain might have been able to win or at least keep the election very close.” According to Professor Sabato, “This is poppycock. Except for a brief honeymoon period for McCain after the GOP convention, Obama consistently led the polls from early summer onwards. The evidence of severe economic slowdown was everywhere from the spring to the fall, and Americans already believed that we were in a serious recession.”
Poppycock? Balderdash. The Republicans did carry substantial political baggage into the 2008 election; but despite these considerable disadvantages, the open seat election was shaping up as a very close contest in the weeks before the national conventions and McCain took the lead after the conventions, only to plummet in the polls with the Wall Street meltdown in mid-September. The Wall Street meltdown was an unanticipated financial crisis that shook the electorate. It was the game changer. It derailed the course of the election and was critical in tipping the election to Obama.
Here is the evidence refuting each of Professor Sabato’s above assertions…