2008 Presidential Election Blog

McCain Concedes

2008-11-05T10:48:00.001-05:00

President Obama

2008-11-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

Backdoor bragging

2008-11-05T08:36:00.002-05:00

My Prediction: Obama 52%, McCain 47%.

Actual Result: Obama 52%, McCain 47%

My Prediction: Obama wins PA, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, and Missouri.

Actual Result: Obama won PA, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and Virginia, with Missouri too close to call

My Prediction in the Electoral College:

Obama 360

McCain 178

Actual Result in the Electoral College:
Obama 349 (could be 360 if he wins Missouri as I predicted)
McCain 163 (could be 178 if he wins NC as I predicted)

I have to say I'm happy I made that prediction post! It's gratifying after all the hours I've put into following the election, I just about nailed it with my predictions.

The Hispanic vote

2008-11-04T22:31:00.003-05:00

...was 8% of the electorate. McCain got only 30%! That's less than the realistic estimate of Bush's percentage in '04 (44% was always unrealistic, due to an exit poll urban oversample--the middle thirties was much more realistic).

It's remarkable given McCain's record on immigration. There's no one with a more favorable record on immigration from the Hispanic point of view. Or is there? Polls show that Hispanic immigrants who have been here the longest are the least likely to favor the kinds of immigration policies McCain pushes, and most likely those immigrants are the ones with higher turnout, since people who are established in a locale tend to vote in higher percentages.

Plus McCain downplayed the immigration issue ever since it all but killed his candidacy in the summer of 2007.

West Virginia for McCain

2008-11-04T22:20:00.002-05:00

McCain is clobbering Obama in West Virginia. Bush won the state with 56%, 423,000 votes to 326,000 for Kerry. McCain's winning it with similar numbers. The Democratic governor and senator both got reelected there.

Appalachia really doesn't like Obama, but he got OH and PA despite that. McCain really needed those states. Right-wing bloggers are congratulating Obama now.

The campaigns matter

2008-11-04T22:14:00.003-05:00

This presidential election has convinced me more than anything that campaigns matter. I felt McCain was running a very good campaign when his polls were going up; his numbers fell when his campaign went astray.

McCain always had less resources to expend. Obama has raised $639 million. Amazingly, he has been campaigning for president for ... 639 days! That's a per diem calculation even I can make.

According to the exit polls so far, 27% of the electorate was contacted by the Obama campaign, while 18% was contacted by the McCain campaign. Obama won the people his campaign contacted 66-32. McCain won his 59-40.

Ohio goes to Obama

2008-11-04T20:53:00.003-05:00

Obama is walloping McCain in Ohio. It's no contest; they called it with less than 20% reporting.

McCain narrowly won the white vote in OH, but the black vote was 12% of the total and it was unanimous for Obama.

40% of the electorate were Democrats, only 30% were Republicans. In 2004 it was 35% Democrat, 40% Republican.

Obama killed on "cares about people like me" in OH, 78-19.

Bush won college grads in Ohio in 2004, Obama won them tonight.

How many people have voted early?

2008-11-04T18:59:00.001-05:00

I got a question on how may people have voted early yesterday. This from earlyvoting.net:

32 states allow no-excuse pre-Election Day in-person voting - either early voting on a voting machine or in-person absentee voting

14 states and the District of Columbia require an excuse for in-person absentee voting

1 state is all vote-by mail

4 states do not allow early or in-person absentee voting

28 states allow no-excuse absentee voting by mail

22 states and the District of Columbia require an excuse to vote absentee by mail

(The all-mail voting state is Oregon.)

In the news yesterday: 28.9 million people voted early this year.

From the Atlantic:

Historically, Republicans have had an advantage over Democrats in terms of absentee balloting; Democrats tend to outperform Republicans in terms of in-person early voting. These disparities are rooted in geography - it's easier to get people to vote in person in cities, and Democrats do well in cities, and it's easier to get people to vote by mail in more rural areas, and Republicans tend to do better in rural areas. Republicans tend to bank more absentee votes than Dems do early votes, in part because a key Democratic urban constituency: African Americans, have been suspicious of early voting.

27.7 million people voted early in 2004, 22.5% of the total. This year, 31.7 million people voted early. That would be 25% of the '04 total, but turnout will be higher this year. By the looks of that increase, the turnout of 123.5 million people in '04 will increase to 141.3 million this year. We'll see if that's correct; it would mean a turnout of 62% (the Voting Age Population of 2008 is 227.7 million).

My Prediction

2008-11-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

Obama 52%, McCain 47%.

Obama wins PA, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Missouri and Virginia.

Electoral College:

Obama 360

McCain 178

Landslide or close race?

2008-11-02T08:19:00.003-05:00

That's the question at this point. I define a blowout by a candidate winning with 350 electoral votes or more. There's about a 50-50 chance that it will be a blowout for Obama, according to the chart above from Five-Thirty-Eight.

Five-Thirty-Eight has also been contending that the race nationally needs to tighten five points for McCain to have a chance. There's been no movement in McCain's direction, however, and he's never been over 44% since the Ides of September, when some crazy bloggers were predicting a McCain blowout, but after which his campaign went south.

Something dramatic would have to happen for McCain to win now. But this is not impossible. The 2000 election featured a surprise release of Dubya's DUI right before election day, which had an impact on undecided voters. It seems less likely now, but there could be an international incident. The Bush administration has been very reckless in provoking Pakistan and Syria in recent days, bombing inside Pakistan and conducting a raid inside Syria, and a cynic could with a lot of justification say they were trying to provoke retaliation that could create such an incident.

An international crisis is the only thing that can save McCain now.

Why McCain will lose

2008-11-02T07:13:00.005-05:00

I've been paying less than close attention to the race recently, as the dearth of recent blog posts indicates. My new job being very demanding, I haven't had much time at all the last ten days. But I almost feel like saying, what does it matter? What has really changed in the interim? Nothing. The state of election has remained the same. The national polls are identical. The Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and South Dakota polls are basically identical to what they were. Obama's gained a small lead in Florida. The Missouri, Virginia, and Pennsylvania polls have tightened in favor of McCain. The Georgia, Indiana, Arizona (!), and Arkansas polls have tightened in favor of Obama. The West Virginia polls are all over the place. The big story is Palin's wardrobe! Who cares about that. Of course she has to buy new clothes. What a non-story. You're really running out of anything substantive to talk about when this dominates two news cycles.

I'm not trying to justify my lack of blogging enthusiasm, but my forced hiatus seemingly at the worst time of the campaign has not missed anything major. The fundamental dynamics of the race has remained the same. So much in electoral politics comes down to the argument you make. McCain has been unable to make an effective argument as to why he should be president, and that's why he will lose on Tuesday.

The NYTimes a week ago had a cover story on the incarnations of McCain. There is such an eerie similarity to Hillary's loss to Obama (though she basically tied him). At first McCain was the experience candidate. The RNC are still running ads attacking Obama on this. They way the ad is phrased is "No Executive Experience." A telling phrasing -- Palin does have executive experience, so she's "most experienced" than Obama. But of course she's not. She's way more inexperienced than Obama.

The Palin pick has really blunted this line of attack. It can no longer be the main reason to elect McCain. However, that doesn't in itself mean the pick was a bad idea. Running on "experience" doesn't work anyway, in my view. If experience is so great, why is this the first time in nearly fifty years that a senator is going to be president? Senators have a greater claim to be presidential timber in terms of experience than anyone else. The reason is voters don't care about experience as a reason to elect someone. It is, rather, a threshold you have to pass in order to be a serious candidate. Once you're there, more experience doesn't help you. The problem is that Palin has issues with that threshold, making Obama look more experienced by contrast. So she has taken away this factor, but again this is not a decisive thing.

Abandoning "experience you can trust" McCain chose the "maverick change" tack with the Palin pick. That is, "Change is coming" but not such radical, untested change. Change that contrasts well with Obama's change. So McCain tried to run against Bush, against Washington, as Obama-lite. This was an interesting chess move. As I've detailed previously, it didn't work because McCain didn't take it seriously. If you are going to bring change, if you are going to be a fighter for the people against the establishment, then you can't be the candidate of bipartisanship. McCain wanted to have it both ways. He wanted to be the bipartisan candidate, which he could have laid claim to with some plausibility. He's bucked his own party to work with the other side, etc. etc. But being the candidate who plays nicely with the other children in the sandbox is a good strategy if you are ahead, and is at cross-purposes with a claim to be a maverick and shake things up.

In a highly-charged, visible race for the presidency, you have to be consistent. You can't be the candidate of change if you want to continue the policies that the party in power has implemented in the recent past. You can't be the candidate of bipartisanship if you are going to shake things up. You have to choose an argument, and hammer away at it. McCain didn't want to choose, and the bailout bill was his Rubicon. He refused to cross. I contend that he had to oppose the bill to win. The problem was that he couldn't. To oppose something with such an elite consensus behind it, a candidate has to be uber-persuasive and hyper-articulate. It is a very difficult thing to do. McCain didn't have it in him.

It is all well and good to say a candidate should do this or that, but in reality the positions a candidate can take on issues is pretty constrained. When everyone agrees that something is good or bad, you had better really know your stuff if you are going off into heterodoxy. The safe view is always the one that most people hold -- this is a democracy after all! McCain couldn't oppose the bailout because with the debates coming up, he could not persuasively make the case that the Washington consensus was wrong. So opposing the bailout was not even an option for him. I make this judgment based on McCain's debate performance. When the questions were on the economy, he would breathe heavily into the microphone, and his words sounded hesitant, like he didn't know what he was going to say next. When the questions were on foreign policy, the adrenaline went rushing through his body, and he spoke with passion and conviction. It's because he knows his stuff with foreign policy, but doesn't have a clue on economic issues.

So McCain was really in a bind. But it's not unexpected for him to be in a bind. Here is a candidate with a lot of liabilities. He's not a great speaker or stump campaigner. (In an appearance at my institution last week, McCain said "agree with Obama" rather than "disagree with Obama" and didn't catch his misstatement until he had finished a 3 minute diatribe -- it was embarrassing, and was played all over the local news.) His great asset was that he was a media darling, yet it's no contest who the media prefers when it comes to him or Obama, or even Hillary. His signature issue set is foreign policy, but he's identified with a disastrous decision on that front, the Iraq war. So it was never going to be easy for McCain. If the financial crisis had come after the debates, McCain might have been able to take a different path and oppose the bailout forcefully in sound bites and canned speeches. Not having to talk about it for extended periods of time from memory might have given him other options. But the way it played out put him in a tight spot.

Why should we elect McCain? That question has not been answered by the campaign. And that is why McCain will lose.

A double-standard?

2008-10-21T11:21:00.001-04:00

Can you imagine if Sarah Palin said "When the stock market crashed in 1929, President Roosevelt got on television and told everyone to calm down"? Can you? Can you? It would be pandemonium!

Now Biden has said this: "We"re about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help."

This is the downside of Biden, straying off-message. Especially by being too into himself and not the good promoter of the top of the ticket.

In the end it doesn't matter. The economy is the main issue, and unless we bomb Iran soon, foreign policy is not going to reach the top of voters' concerns.

I've always liked Biden. He gets a pass on the silly comments because he's been around and knows his stuff. So doesn't he deserve a pass? Palin, one could argue, does not. But it still is a double-standard.

Biden was a great pick because it showed Obama being serious about being president. It was a pick with a view to governing, not to winning. I think in the end a running-mate who is a gimmick (Palin) doesn't help you. The political advantage of a running-mate comes when the political advantage is secondary to governing. Reagan picked Bush, Clinton picked Gore, W picked Cheney, and now Obama picks Biden.

The Last Debate

2008-10-15T21:04:00.014-04:00

(This is PotusBlog's 400th post!)

Obama came out strong, just like the first debate. McCain got the question first and started with a typical politician's response, not giving specifics and somewhat avoiding the question. The contrast with Obama, who seems sharp and direct by contrast. McCain followed up with a good personal appeal to a man Obama met on the campaign trail, and the Obama just took all the wind out of his sails with a quip that was actually funny (!), "Joe the Plummer's been watching Sen. McCain's ads." Got a small audience response--that's important, because all the studies show that audience reaction has a huge impact on TV viewership evaluation. McCain's joke, "We're talking about Joe the Plummer" when Obama mentioned Buffet, was just as funny but got no audience reaction. Obama's joke a little while later about Fox News also got a laugh, as did his joke a little past that saying "congrats" to McCain for the Cardinals beating the Cowboys. A pro-Obama audience it seems.

McCain came out with passion on taxes after his opening two salvos, and made up for lost ground, putting Obama on his heels. McCain had a great moment, looking Obama in the eyes and saying "I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to vote for President Bush you should have run four years ago." Oh yeah! Where was this passion in the last two debates? McCain should have done this from the beginning. The anger and passion makes him seem a lot more vigorous. The late night comedy shows have had a field day making fun of the McCain ticket, and McCain himself as old and doddering. As has been widely remarked, they don't know how to make fun of Obama. Call it the comedy gap. McCain showing controlled anger I think would mitigate this a little bit. But only a little.

"I give you tremendous credit for that" Obama on McCain's opposition to torture. Why do politicians phrase it this way? I think it would be better to say "You deserve tremendous credit for that."

McCain was passionate about negative ads, defending the people at his rallies, the relationship of Obama with Ayers and ACORN, putting Obama again on his heels. "I've roundly condemned" his despicable acts, Obama said. I think it would be more effective to look into the camera and say "I condemn them." But Obama ran through the whole story on Ayers and ACORN with a lawyer's closing argument that brought overwhelming evidence to bear that these are distractions that a desperate McCain is focusing on because he's got nothing else. I give the exchange to Obama.

Obama's a pro. Speaking well of Biden and not even mentioning SP when asked to compare the two. That's exactly right. McCain had a much more difficult time (of course). It's hard to listen to him refer to SP without SNL ringing in your ears. McCain flubbed his "breath of fresh air" line about her, and I had a jolly laugh about McCain accidentally saying "breasts." If he said that word on live TV in a debate in reference to Sarah Palin, his campaign would be over! Bush could nuke Iran and Russia and Pakistan on Nov. 3 and Obama'd still win!

Obama would smile when McCain spoke about him. That made it seem like McCain was distorting Obama's positions. It was a subtle "there you go again" message implicit there. I thought it was a very funny moment when an hour into the debate Obama looked into the camera and told Joe the Plumber that his fine for not providing health care would be "zero." McCain had said that "he'd sure like to know what that fine's gonna be." "Zero!" said McCain, and then went on a flurry of blinking that just looked so funny on the split screen.

McCain went over the line with Joe the Plumber. He should have dropped it. His obsession with J the P became a parody of itself. SNL must be so happy for this; their script writes itself on this one.

I thought the rest of the debate was super boring. I was bored. I thought McCain through everything and the kitchen sink at Obama, and the former did well, but Obama weathered the storm with aplomb. He is our next president; that's what I kept thinking watching his performance--not based on the polls as much as his performance.

McCain's Insane Tax Plan

2008-10-15T11:55:00.004-04:00

I have to wonder what this campaign would be like if there were different nominees from the parties. I have to think that Hillary would be up on McCain as least as much as Obama, but would have moved into the lead even earlier. The real difference would be with the Republicans--had Mitt Romney been the nominee, the GOP would have been in much better shape to argue that their candidate is the one who understands the economy and could fix it.

Or would they? Romney lacks the popular touch even more than McCain. However, McCain's age works against him through the comparison with the youthful Obama, which would have been more neutralized with Romney. McCain doesn't exactly connect with voters--support for him in large part stems from unease with Obama. That same unease would've worked for Romney, but other than age I don't think Mitt would've been a much better nominee even given the financial mess.

And then there's the Huckster. The only other viable Republican nominee, Huckabee has what the other two lack, which is the common touch. It would have been a dangerous comparison with Obama from the Democratic perspective. Huckabee could have smeared him on the Rev. Wright stuff, and been able to bring it up again and again without really bringing it up.

I was prompted in the direction of these wild what-if speculations due to McCain's tax cut proposal yesterday. What a disaster. For a campaign that I had so much respect for strategy-wise prior to the Ides of September, their stock has rapidly declined in my mind. McCain should have opposed the bailout. This would have given him what he lacked and what he was vulnerable on--a populist appeal. He could have done it with conservative bona fides, since a lot of the GOP base opposed it.

The whole reason Palin was picked was precisely for an injection of the popular touch. But Palin, like McCain's strategy in the last four weeks, is a gimmick. All McCain's trickery has turned his campaign into a laughing stock. And now this--his response to the financial crisis is a capital gains tax! Unbelievable.

I don't care if it's right. I don't care if it is sound policy. This is not college ECON 202 class. This is a presidential campaign, and a capital gains tax cut does nothing for McCain's campaign. Nothing, but give Obama a gift complete with wrapping and a red bow. It fits the stereotype of McCain being out of touch, flailing around with his proposals, and in the tank with Bush big-business policies. That's a stereotype that McCain needed to work against, not comfortably slide into.

McCain had his chance on the economy to rally disaffected voters, and he chose the safe route. This is why he's down and will probably lose.

Obama and the Bradley Effect

2008-10-15T10:30:00.000-04:00

One thing I've been thinking about recently as Obama has increased his lead on McCain is whether a predicted blowout for the Dems will turn into Obama scraping by, as a small percentage of white voters change their minds last minute. Besides the fact that an important segment of the electorate makes up its mind last minute. The late deciders swung against Bush in 2000, costing him the popular vote, partly due to the DUI story that broke right before election day. They split evenly in '04, which sunk Kerry. What will they do now? Will they balk at electing our nation's first black president? There's of course the racist angle. There's also the lack of experience angle, which I have always defended as legitimate. McCain is not doing a very good job right now of portraying Obama as inexperienced. But there's still some time left, the late deciders haven't decided, and events could swing McCain's way. Obama could be peaking right now. The only good time to peak is right before the election. This campaign isn't over yet, and I continue to obsess about the possibility of an October surprise of an attack on Iran. McCain's numbers go up in a foreign policy crisis.

Concerning the Bradley Effect, Andrew Hacker writes:

Some people who are telling pollsters they're for Obama could actually be lying. Such behavior has been called the "Bradley Effect ," after Tom Bradley, a black mayor of Los Angeles who lost his bid to be California's governor back in 1982. While every poll showed him leading his white opponent, that isn't how the final tally turned out. Things haven't been far different in some other elections involving black candidates. In 1989, David Dinkins was eighteen points ahead in the polls for New York's mayoral election, but ended up winning by only a two-point edge. The same year, Douglas Wilder was projected to win Virginia's governorship by nine points, but squeaked in with one half of one percent of the popular vote. Nor are examples only from the past. In Michigan in 2006, the final polls forecast that the proposal to ban affirmative action would narrowly prevail by 51 percent. In fact, it handily passed with 58 percent. That's a Bradley gap of seven points, which isn't trivial. Since 1968, the Democratic Party has not been able to muster a majority of white Americans. Al Gore fell twelve percentage points behind among white voters in 2000, and John Kerry had a seventeen-point gap four years later.

McCain hates Obama

2008-10-08T12:23:00.003-04:00

We've seen it before. Hillary (and Bill) Clinton's rage and disbelief over Barack Obama's candidacy did them no favors in the primaries. Rule Number 1 is "don't underestimate your opponent," and the Clintons were a textbook example. You need to hate your opponent in any contest (e.g., sports) in order to get motivated to beat them, but it has to be that right mixture of hatred, fear, and contempt. If one of those elements is out of whack, then there's trouble.

McCain seems to be falling into the trap of too much contempt. "How can this young'un be on the same stage with me? With me?" McCain seems almost to be asking himself. And it comes out in various ways. Byron York has the rundown on it today. McCain was trying to be funny in his "that one" comment in the debate. McCain really doesn't have that good of a sense of humor. His contempt for Obama seeped out a little there. After the debate he *looked* like he didn't want to shake Obama's hand. So what if he had already? He looked like he didn't on TV. A Freudian slip, in view of all the voters.

This really was the only interesting thing in a boring debate. Obama's line in these debates has been "He's misrepresenting my positions." McCain's contempt seems to validate this to people.

The Second Debate

2008-10-07T21:16:00.011-04:00

Obama did a good job at the beginning on the economy. McCain just looked like he didn't have a clue. He looked old. He breathed heavily into the mic. He stressed energy independence as a economic solution, which didn't strike a chord. He stressed $700B going overseas for oil, which reminded people of the total for the bailout. Obama said $700B when he was talking about what we've spent on Iraq; also reminiscent of the bailout.

McCain's problem is that he wants to steal Obama's message of a new politics, yet he has to attack Obama, which looks like the old politics. Obama had this great line early saying "Look, you don't want to hear politicians attack each other" as he pivoted to what he was proposing. I thought he really connected with the young man who asked the question. McCain talked about bipartisan Reagan and Tip O'Neil in one breath, and in the very next sentence he mentioned how he himself "wasn't very popular sometimes in his own party, much less the other." It's a fundamentally flawed argument.

"What sacrifices would you ask for?" The first internet question. McCain repeated lines about cutting programs, without giving any (unpopular) specifics. Obama first spoke about Bush saying "Go out and shop" after 9/11. Good start. He then started talking about government programs--not personal enough. Then he started talking about people using less energy in their own lives...but then related it back to government giving incentives. I thought that could have been more powerful. Too Jimmy Carterish? But the people liked Carter's "malaise" speech--it was only the cynical media who turned on him and turned the speech into a laughingstock. I thought Obama missed a real opportunity to issue a politically risky call to individual Americans to share the burden of consuming less. A lot of talk about "sharing the burden" but I thought it could have been even more specific. (But that means more risky.) McCain hit Obama on looking to the government too much on health care. I think McCain could have pressed this aspect a lot more.

Obama's tone was good, and I'm continually impressed with how he doesn't say "uh" anymore. McCain said "my friends" a ton, and his "s's" whistled into the microphone.

I thought Obama won the "what's your priority" question. He said, "We need to prioritize" while McCain said "We can do all of them." Bush 43's political genius at the beginning of his first term was to portray himself, at least, as someone willing to prioritize. People roll their eyes when politicians dodge this type of question. McCain knew he was beat and returned to it in a follow-up that I thought smacked of desperation.

McCain continues to be the strongest when he preaches his record against earmarks. Obama is the weakest when he reminds everyone that McCain is part of the problem in Washington in the last 26 years--this only reminds people that Obama is the newbie.

When talking about health care insurance companies Obama bashed Delaware--interesting given his choice of running mate!

When McCain started talking about foreign policy he got animated and was at his best. The contrast with his speech when he's speaking about the economy is marked. McCain said, "The United States of America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world." More overweening American exceptionalism you cannot find--not that the nation is blessed by God in his providence, but rather takes the place of God's providence. He had said at the beginning of the debate that the economic problem was caused by Washington and greed on Wall Street.

McCain had more malapropisms. McCain: "Let's keep never forget the trouble we're in today." McCain: We have to make sure we're not "exacerbating our reputation."

I thought Tom Brokaw was obnoxious from beginning to end. He sniped and snarked, was schoolmarmish and a know-it-all, yet at the end he didn't even know what to say without the teleprompter.

Palin on SNL?

2008-10-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

Consensus: McCain missed the boat

2008-10-06T13:23:00.002-04:00

I agree with the Hammer over at the Washington Post--McCain is throwing too many hail marys, making Obama look cool and stable.

I've always argued that he had to throw hail marys. The real problem is not that he's doing so, it's that the last one fumbled badly. The gimmicky "let's-suspend-the-campaign" when he had no intentions of following through on skipping the debate was really bad. The fill-in for Rush Limbaugh today was bemoaning the chance McCain had to rally voters for change by opposing his party's capitol hill leadership and taking a very popular position opposing the bailout.

I advised McCain's team to oppose the bailout on 9/22. I guess they aren't reading this blog, or else they felt that the downside I listed--that McCain couldn't pull it off because he doesn't know enough about economic issues--certified the decision not to oppose the plan.

Yet it is becoming more and more clear that this might be *the* turning point in the campaign. McCain had a shot, and he blew it. Airball. He is sinking in the polls. On the ground in Ohio people have the sense that the tide has turned. A former White House employee admitted to me over the weekend that McCain missed a big opportunity.

Palin in the debate was all about stealing the change message. Effective--if it had been backed up with substance. Palin didn't provide substance. McCain could have provided it for her, by taking a popular position sharply divergent from Obama's on such a visible issue.

McCain shot an airball with time running out. There's still time left, but it starting to look like desperation-ball for the Republicans.

Palin survives

2008-10-02T22:05:00.004-04:00

Joe Biden outclassed SP at every turn in the Veep debate, and it didn't matter. He had to be deferential to her, and that worked in her favor.

The format worked massively in her favor. She would wilt in a format like the first presidential debate, which allowed for detailed follow-ups. Basically, Biden would say something, Palin would respond, Biden might respond to SP but then Ifill would move on to another question. Palin got lucky, I thought.

Palin would have won the debate if she had dropped completely the word "also." By the end it was so painful. The end of the debate was grating--I agree completely with Chuck Todd that Biden had a great end of the debate.

Palin successfully stole Obama's message of change. That was impressive. She also played up seeming real and in touch--also impressive. McCain has to be very happy. She gives his ticket a softer edge, allows him to steal Obama's change message, and fires up his base, all while complementing his maverick image. Everything he needed.

Fighting Biden to a draw is exactly what Palin needed to do. She garbled and mangled answers. She got facts wrong. But she will be forgiven it. I think this gives McCain a short little bounce, but that's it. Biden was too impressive. His tear-up when he was talking about his injured kids was powerful. He made a very substantive case that McCain is not a maverick. But he was hampered by the debate format and his opponent's gender.

The Veep Debate

2008-10-02T20:55:00.001-04:00

Palin needs not to be humiliated

2008-10-02T15:42:00.002-04:00

The Veep Debate tonight might well decide the election. If SP is humiliated, the combination of McCain's bungling and the economic crisis will combine to sink his campaign, perhaps for good. If SP really tanks, it's even probably sunk for good, I would say, though nothing's for certain (especially with Bush possibly orchestrating an October surprise).

The expectations are super low for SP. This favors her, big-time. If she makes a barely passable showing, the story'll be her come-from-behind triumph. Or at least her supporters will think so; the media is another story. Will they gang up on her? I think so, but I also think they have to be sensitive to their clientele, and they don't want to be seen picking on her. So they'll gladly make fun of whatever is awkward and unbecoming. I really don't see how SP can avoid the mockery she is about to get dumped on her. However, if she's poised, they vipers can't unleash their venom, because they'd be picking on her.

And of course Biden does not want to be seen this way either! But he won't. He's too good of a politician to flub it up. Democrats don't have to worry--this one's all on SP. Biden will be fine, he's done this numerous times. He won't mess it up. But he can be fought to a draw by the ordinary gal Pal(in) if she's passably articulate.

But I just don't think she will be. Best odds, 40% she pulls through.

House votes it down

2008-09-29T14:59:00.003-04:00

The House voted the thing down! Amazing. Now both McCain and Obama can fret and blame someone else, and be spared a controversial vote. They will perhaps blame each other for failing to convince their own partisans in the House.

Here's the vote tally. 95 Dems voted no, out of 235 (40%). 133 Republicans voted no, out of 198 (67%).

Democrats figure that the bill is unpopular anyway, so why not do the popular thing which will also benefit the party--people will want a change of party if there is a deepening recession.

Republicans must have voted their principles, which makes them popular in Republican districts.

Let the blame game begin.

Post-debate reflections

2008-09-29T11:24:00.002-04:00

True to this blog's motto, "We're only two or three news cycles behind," I want to give some post-debate reflections.

This was probably the most important debate, as long as there's no major fumbles in the next two (as there was not in this one). The first thing of note is that the debate was indeed a draw, as the commentators have stated. And the reason is that the middle of the debate was even, and was bookended by two bad moments for each candidate--Obama looked so sharp at the beginning while McCain was embarrassingly bad, and Obama was hammered by McCain at the end of the debate.

So if voters are making up their mind based on actually watching the thing, it really matters whether you tuned in ten minutes late and watched until the end, or whether you caught the beginning of the debate and broke off without seeing the end. Like the very first TV debate between Nixon and Kennedy (which resulted in different winners depending on whether people listened to the debate or watched it on TV), these two scenarios would result in vastly different impressions of who won.

If you watched the whole thing, you thought it was a draw. I agree with conventional wisdom that a draw favors Obama. I think Obama won. He proved he can be president. The VP debate this week will validate Obama's choice of Biden, humilitate McCain's choice of Palin, and last Friday's debate will be but a memory.

SNL lampooned McCain the night after the debate for his gimmicks. McCain can get away with gimmicks because he is such a substantive candidate, has a long record. He has capital to spend on this score, and I think he should spend it. I thought he should have opposed the bailout--that would have been a really substantive way to shake up the race, instead of a gimmicky way, but he decided to play it safe. That won't win him the election. The bailout will probably pass today, in which case McCain could have his cake and eat it too--posturing in a popular way (no one likes the bailout) while not taking the blame for it not passing. Of course, would it have passed if he opposed it? Perhaps not. And what the bailout is doing is delaying the (inevitable) economic pain that has to come sooner or later. You don't run for president nowadays talking about how short-term pain is good. You run by promising everyone the world.

McCain really came into his own last night. He doesn't think much of Obama, but managed to conceal his contempt. He started out so flat, it was just terrible. But he gained his footing when he started talking with passion about earmarks. That passion never left him. It made him seem really genuine, in contrast to his gimmicky campaign. If Palin has any chance against Biden it's to seem genuine as opposed to Biden's slick Washington mountebank demeanor.

But Obama won the debate. His flubs at the end were even excusable, I thought. McCain was snearing in his face, and Obama can seem like he has a legit beef that his positions are misrepresented. His line the next day was a powerful one: "John McCain had a lot to say about me in the debate, and not much at all to say about you. He never even mentioned 'the middle class' once."

Likewise, McCain's flubs at the beginning were excusable, in the sense that he was really sharp the whole rest of the debate, which is tough for a 72-year-old in the bright light standing for 90 minutes.

Obama won because he did exactly what he had to do. Unlike McCain, Obama can't resort to gimmicks. He can't go after McCain passionately. He can't get down and dirty. The reason is the bubba vote--a young black upstart attacking an American hero would only produce backlash. He had to show that he's up for the job, presidential. He had to get people comfortable with him as a leader. He did that.

I think he should have mentioned his Christianity and how it guides him in life. Why doesn't he do this? America doesn't elect secular candidates, or at least hasn't yet. Change might be around the horizon, but why risk it? Obama could have boxed in McCain, who would sound too much like Bush with his belligerent attitude to every major foreign policy problem, mixing in any God-speak. Obama's married with two kids, McCain ruthlessly cheated on and then divorced his wife, who was faithful to him while he was a POW and remains faithful to him to this day, in order to wed a young heiress. But there's one reason why Obama can't do this: it conjures up Wright, and there's no way Obama wants that. He's better off with the whole thing being a forgotten piece of ancient history.

Neither candidate has much of a sense of humor, and McCain's jokes fell flat, but he did have two moments when he really flummoxed Obama with humor--the line about not being able to hear Obama, and the imaginery sit-down with Ahmadinejad.

The Debate

2008-09-26T23:14:00.000-04:00