Obama’s strongest supporters are, as usual, rallying against any slight against their candidate in the most overwrought way possible, while Obama’s blunder of a remark seems to have given a green light for just about everyone who is not favorably disposed towards Obama to pin him with a very damaging label. Having been shielded by a friendly press and overprotective, hypersensitive supporters for most of the year, Obama seems to have become very careless. In making an incendiary charge (his opponents will engage in race-baiting) that was also false (to the extent that he blamed McCain by name for it), he may have done the kind of serious damage to his campaign that all of the other controversies, both real and manufactured, and all of the spurious but widely-circulated claims against him have failed to do.
[I]n the prevailing political circumstances—the hunger for change in the electorate, the abject bankruptcy of the Republican brand, McCain's positions on the wrong side of the public on the war and the economy, his age, and his pitiful performance skills—it may reflect a cold-eyed realism that's an asset in any campaign. Moreover, at least in the short term, it actually seems to be working. Measured against the generic Democratic ballot, Obama continues to underperform dramatically. And since shifting to a more harshly negative posture, McCain has gained ground on Obama in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, according to recent Quinnipiac swing-state polls.
All of which, naturally, has more than a few Democrats in a state of mortal dread, although they tend not to be the types with GOT HOPE? bumper stickers on their Volvos. Making them all the more queasy is what they regard as Obama's tepid and too-placid responses to the most scurrilous of McCain’s j'accuses. "Obama says he's 'disappointed' in McCain when he charges him with near treason, patronizing him, as if he’s got a twenty-point lead with a week to go," says one tough-minded organizer on the left. "It’s shades of Swift Boat."
The new McCain strategy is a fascinating alloy of elitism and anti-intellectualism, and in that sense, perhaps no alloy at all. Still, the tactic derides celebrity--presumably because celebrity is achieved through popularity, not through doing anything "real," and then it asks people to vote on base prejudice toward people who aren't like them, not on issues.
Are the McCain people waiting for September to get serious? If so, they are making a big mistake and missing an important opportunity. History indicates that the best time to beat a new candidate is in the summer. August to be precise.
Dukakis, Mondale, and Kerry all were destroyed in the summer, long before the fall campaign began. In 1984, the offensive against Geraldine Ferraro crippled Mondale well before Labor Day. In 1988, the pledge of allegiance, revolving door, and Willie Horton ads all ran in the summer. Dukakis was dead by September. And the swift boat attack on Kerry defeated him well before the summer was over.-- DICK MORRIS and EILEEN McGANNObama may turn out to be no FDR as McCain certainly wouldn't be, but this year is more like 1932 than Reagan's 1980, and "muddle through" won't quite cut it. Inertia is tempting, but it works better in a time such as Eisenhower's with a booming economy after winning a worldwide war. Now there is broken crockery to be swept up.-- ROBERT STEINDemocratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John McCain among the nation's low-wage workers, but many are unconvinced that either presidential candidate would be better than the other at fixing the ailing economy or improving the health-care system, according to a new national poll.
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate.-- MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JON COHENOut of general fondness, the Washington press corps (which is not just a phrase but a definable community of people) has for almost a decade graded John McCain on a curve, especially in the last eighteen months when he's slipped perceptibly. Now, in response to the bludgeoning and campaign of falsehoods his campaign has unleashed over the last ten days, a number of his longtime admirers in the punditocracy have written articles either claiming that they'd misjudged the man or lamenting his betrayal of his better self.
So my question is, do they and the top editors who with them define the tone of coverage, keep grading McCain on the curve that has so aided him over the last year?
Cartoon by Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate
No comments:
Post a Comment