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I'm not an elections analyst, and there are so many unknowns that it's impossible to figure out where this race is going just from the outside. But it's obvious that McCain, in an environment in which any Republican should be getting crushed, is gaining. Here's Pollster.com and its national polling composite.
As one of the first people to look at the systematic growth of Democratic field tools in the context of their origins from 2002-2007 in a community of Democratic tool developers, I'm not one to sneer at organizing and field. What Obama people are doing there is really impressive, pushing aside the tired Michael Whouley's of the world and bringing in a new crop of powerful organizers. Ultimately, field is about a national conversation just as media is about a national conversation, only on different terrains where the tactics and advantages differ. Obama is out-organizing McCain dramatically in field, both in terms of small dollar donations and in terms of putting real resources into states. But McCain is out-organizing Obama in the media space, which is much more about elite organizing. McCain has an effective set of surrogates and his outside groups are functional and accepted into the national conversation, whereas Obama has marginalized his erstwhile allies in the media space. As a result, very little that comes from outside sticks onto McCain. As a simple example, McCain had such a horrible week while Obama was abroad and the Iraqi government endorsed Obama's withdrawal strategy that one top Republican strategist said 'We're fucked'. And yet, McCain is gaining in the polls, and the media narrative just didn't pick up McCain's Iraq position (even though allies like VoteVets pushed it hard).
I don't have any conclusions with this post, as I'm not going to pretend like I know how to run a Presidential race. I don't, and most of us don't understand the remarkable pressures involved in being an incredibly famous icon who can't make a mistake, or even worse, can't allow others to even frame anything you do as a mistake while building a policy apparatus to run the United States Government at the same time as you build a $800 million operation to persuade 60 million Americans to go out one day and pull a lever exactly the way you want them to. Still, I have thought for years that this election should be an easy win for Democrats, and there's no reason to change my mind because of a few polls in July. The terrain heavily favors the Democrats, despite handwringing all over the place from anti-Obama Democrats and hosana's from pro-Obama Democrats who think that only he can possibly eke out a narrow victory in an environment where Bush is in the high 20s.
But certainly, people in the campaign and savvy insiders are worried. |
