The 4 daily tracking polls have been moving in Barack Obama's direction in recent days and today the average is: Obama 46.75, McCain 44.75, a 2-point lead for the Democrat.
Obama is nearly back to where he was Sept. 6 when the average showed him leading McCain by 3 points. Obama appears to trail in swing state polling as Chris points out below because some of those polls are afflicted by age. Other forecasters electoral projections are also afflicted by inclusion of Zogby internet polls, which might be worse than old polling.
By my accounting, the last remnants of the McCain-Palin bounce faded away last weekend. Polling conducted Sept. 15 onward should show a more positive picture for Obama at least until something happens to change the current direction of the race. There's a rumor, which I'm starting right here, that McCain will dump Palin and replace her with Jim Cramer from CNBC's Mad Money. Sounds about right.
Full numbers are inside.
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This ad is actually airing, not just online. Two-minute ads are very expensive to run. This tells me: 1) Obama's is having a good September. This good? We'll see; 2) The campaign believes this moment, when financial nerves are frayed, is one where reassuring voters you've got a plan may actually win the election and justify the expense.
The ad is not flashy but it's anti-flashiness actually draws your eyes to the screen because how often are voters just talked to in a reasonable fashion?
Maybe it's just boring and I'm too willing an audience for it. What's your take?
The much ballyhooed “Palin effect” on the McCain campaign and GOP efforts in general is no more. Or, if there is a Palin effect, it's likely a negative one. The evidence is in today's Research 2000 poll for DKos. Palin has higher unfavorables than favorables. Here's the gap between her positives and negatives over the past week:
Sept. 11: +17 (day the Gibson interview airs)
Sept. 12: +14
Sept. 13: +9
Sept. 14: +5
Sept. 15: +4
Sept. 16: +1
Sept. 17: -1 (today)
Today, 45% report an unfavorable view of Palin compared to 44% who have a positive view. John McCain has been trending down daily as well from a recent mark of +13 down to today's +3. By comparison, Barack Obama is +18 and Joe Biden +17.
If you don't trust the Research 2000 poll you can find the same trend in other polls, a sharp decline in favorability over the last week. Palin will be an anchor for the McCain campaign which explains this.
As Chris just wrote below as I was preparing this, the Tracking Poll Average now shows a tie:
Obama, 46.0
McCain, 46.0
This is the first time in the history of the tracking poll average that we've had an exact tie, except when there were just two tracking polls when it happened all the time.
The trend is clear, McCain's lead has been slowly fading from it's peak of exactly 2.0 points on Sept. 8 and 9. What is not clear is whether this fade is just the typical end of a bounce or if it is due, in part, to the recent negative press (well deserved) experienced by the McCain-Palin campaign. I hope it's the latter because rather than settling with where we were right before the conventions started (a tie) I would like to see the McCain-Palin slide continue.
What do you think will happen tomorrow in the tracking poll average? The poll is inside along with tracking poll numbers going back to Sept. 5.
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America's gut reaction to Sarah Palin has been positive, and so her stumbles during the Charlie Gibson interview might not really settle in.
Based on the data we have, this is false. Palin is in a favorability free fall. In just 4 days, since her interview with Gibson in fact, the gap between those who view her favorably and those who hold unfavorable views has almost disappeared. According to Research 2000 polling, more than half the country held a favorable opinion of Palin during the 3 days prior to Sept. 11 (52%) while 35% held unfavorable attitudes. That was the day the Gibson interview aired. The 17-point net positive has fallen, as of today, to just 4 points:
Sept. 11: +17 net positive
Sept. 12: +14
Sept. 13: +9
Sept. 14: +5
Sept. 15 (today): +4
Palin is by far the least popular of the 4 candidates for Pres./VP and I don't think her slide is over yet. Because she is McCain's creation, she is taking him down as well. He had a +13 net positive just three days ago, then +12, then +9 and today just +6. By comparison both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are holding steady at +16 net positives.
As I argued yesterday, Palin can help drag down McCain. Certainly, in the end, it's about McCain. He decided she was the best prepared after all. Her inadequacy tells voters so much about McCain that bad news about her will continue to hurt him as well.
There's been some debate over the relative advantage or disadvantage of the Obama campaign focusing too much on Sarah Palin. In a moment, I'll give an argument why focusing on her is win-win-win.
First, though, the tracking poll numbers. These were covered earlier today in quick hits but I'll recap here because the news is good for a change. McCain's lead in the tracking poll average had been in the 1-to-2 point range for almost a full week but today dropped to just a 0.25 point lead, 46.25 to 46.0. So my bold prediction from yesterday of the lead falling below 1 today was correct (full numbers on the inside).
Now, back to Palin. One of the 4 tracking polls, Research 2000 for dKos, has some interesting internals which show Palin in a steep favorability dive. Follow along for more.
Update: Almost forgot. I'd like to thank Tina Fey for accepting my plea for her to make cameos as Palin on SNL this fall.
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(UPDATE: Correction below, I inverted the D/H tracking numbers)
Almost no A little movement in the tracking poll numbers released today compared to yesterday. Barack Obama's numbers were almost identical across all four while McCain improved a bitwent down a point in one and up a point in another. The result is the exact same 1-point a 1.5 point McCain lead in the tracking poll average, 47.0 to 45.5.
The 4 tracking polls are Research 2000 for DKos, Rasmussen, Gallup, and Diageo/Hotline and each is based on 3-day rolling averages which serve to eliminate some of the bounce that smaller one day polls would exhibit. By averaging them together you get even less choppiness.
For a full week, Obama is between 45.0 and 45.75 in the average. McCain is almost as stable coming in between 46.2 and 47.3 during that same period. If the recent bad press for the McCain-Palin ticket is going to have any effect we will see it in this average in the next day or two. Otherwise we must expect that this is the new state of the race until the debates begin in about 2 weeks. Daily numbers for the last 9 days are inside.
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Yesterday was supposed to be “the first day of the rest of the campaign” according to the Obama team and the point at which they started to fire back, according to reports I read. So I was a bit disappointed when the day ended and the only “hitting back” were two rather uninspired ads. One ad is just Obama talking into the camera about as uncharismatically as Obama is capable of and saying the other side is talking about change but he means it. Nothing else in the ad, not even a symbolic item or two in the background. The other ad at least mocks McCain as being out of touch and unable to use a computer but I'm not sure how many votes this moves. In fact some lower information voters may not use a computer either and probably don't like to think of themselves as “out of touch.”
So either the campaign is just organically careful and unwilling to take chances at this point or they have a stealthy double-reverse psychology type of plan. While I fear the former, I'm hoping it's the latter and it goes something like this (follow along).
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John McCain maintains a 1-point lead in the tracking poll average today with McCain at 46.75 and Barack Obama at 45.75. The 4 tracking polls are Research 2000 for DKos, Rasmussen, Gallup, and Diageo/Hotline.
This is the second straight day with a 1.0 margin between the two after two days of small drops from McCain's peak in the tracking poll average of 2.0. The numbers for the past week are inside.
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Some recent polling suggests Barack Obama is weak (still) with older white women. I'm not sure, but I would guess that demographic is a pretty big part of the audience for “The View” which is where John McCain was this morning.
Watch these video clips and tell me what you think. Here's a summary of how this appearance may really hurt him:
1. Joy Behar said to his face that his recent ads about Obama were lies
2. Barbara Walters pointed out that he himself uses “lipstick on a pig” and that Obama's reference was not about Palin.
3. McCain said Roe vs. Wade was a bad decision to booing from the audience.
4. Whoopi Goldberg said that appointing strict constitutionalists, the GOP mantra, would return her to slavery.
5. Barbara Walters kept pressing McCain on just what Sarah Palin was supposed to be coming to Washington to reform and suggested it was he who needed reforming.
6. They forced McCain to talk about separation of church and state and how a Palin administration, if it came to that, might not see a need for much separation.
UPDATE 7. They told him that Palin did accept earmarks and he responded with the whopper “not as Governor she didn't.”
There was some feel-good stuff about kids and such after Cindy McCain came out and I'm sure I'm viewing this through blue-tinted glasses, but I've got to think this was a voting net loser for McCain. Palin may be more of a draw than McCain for their ticket but it was clear from McCain's own mouth he won't have her on that show to face their firing squad (he said it's about the top of the ticket).
I know most people have seen this video but if you know somebody in the Obama campaign or somebody close to somebody important in the Obama campaign, please send them the link to this video and see if they can't edit something shorter and air it:
Sarah Palin said two things which can be pegs for an attack ad of this kind:
1. War with Russia could happen over the Georgia conflict
Sarah Palin's “perhaps” in response to the question of whether we might have to go to war with Russia over Georgia is getting a lot of attention. The truth, though, is that Palin was doing little more that drawing out the logical inference of McCain & Co.'s unhinged policy vis a vis Russia — not a huge surprise if you've just learned the policy in the last week. But McCain and those in his entourage at least have the seasoning to know not to traipse into throwaway hypotheticals about 'war' with the only other country in the world with a vast and eminently deliverable nuclear arsenal.
Georgia10 at dKos:
How absolutely, head-in-the-ground oblivious do you have to be to our national politics to not be familiar with the Bush Doctrine, the very cornerstone of this administration's foreign policy and the doctrine that led us into the most disastrous foreign policy decision in American history?
Oh, that's right. This oblivious:
“I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
Andrew Sullivan:
I'm not sure how to respond because I believe the entire last two weeks have been a farce, and ABC News is now an integral, enabling part of that farce…… All I have learned thus far is that a McCain administration would be prepared to go to war with Russia over Georgia and will never, ever criticize or oppose any decision made by the government of the state of Israel. And I knew that already.
Each of these organization uses 3-day rolling average with the numbers released the next day. Here are the latest averages and the averages of recent days:
Sept. 11: Obama 45.75, McCain 46.75
Sept. 10: Obama 45.3, McCain 46.7
Sept. 9: Obama 45.3, McCain 47.3
Sept. 8: Obama 45.0, McCain 47.0
So the tracking polls say, collectively, that McCain has a 1-point lead in polling done over the last 3 days. It appears that McCain's lead is doing a slow fade with the tracking poll margin going from McCain +2, +2, +1.3 and now +1.
If polling done today, Sept. 11, follows this trend we may see a literal tie in the tracking poll average tomorrow or the next day.
Earlier today Matt proposed that when it comes to message control the Obama campaign has some things in common with the Dukakis campaign of 20 years ago. Many readers found the comparison bothersome. Some were a little peaved. Others were even irked.
Since the comparison was entirely about strategy and not how they were separated at birth or something I'm not sure what all the fuss is about and I don't buy, and never have, that pointing out possible strategic errors when the most important 8 weeks of the campaign have yet to play out is some sort of political treason.
But I digress because that's not the point of this post. While many of us agree that “more offense, less defense” is a good idea there are times when responding is necessary and useful. But it's how you respond that can make all the difference. In terms of the evolution of campaign messaging it looks like this:
1988, Dukakis: Stay above it all, launch earnest, belated responses
1992, Clinton: Respond fast and, at times, aggressively
2004, Kerry: Wait and see if media goes with a story, respond if necessary
2008, Obama: Respond, laugh it off, mock opponents
I know I have skipped Gore but that's only because I don't recall what the Gore campaign did when, for example, he was accused of being a serial liar. Someone add that in comments.
I want to expand on Clinton and Kerry in the extended entry but here is a teaser on how I think you respond to the more outrageous attacks:
A response can sometimes be an effective attack as well. Follow along.
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The cost of running for President keeps going up but now we're getting into some truly huge figures. The Obama campaign hasn't released how much it raised in August but even without it they were in the neighborhood of $400 million going back to the beginning of 2007. It seems certain the campaign will break a half billion dollars before this is over.
With the polls tightening the money is again an issue. The McCain campaign appears flush with $200 million to spend over the final 2 months of the campaign. A majority of McCain's money will come from the supporting RNC while $84 million comes from federal matching funds.
Because the Obama campaign opted out of public funds and the DNC has only a fraction of what the RNC has, the Obama campaign has its work cut out. The good news is they are reporting that August will be a record month, topping the previous mark of $55 million.
But I think the bigger news will concern the September report which could exceed $100 million dollars. Crazy? The projection follows.
Lately it has been hard to consume your offerings. I understand we are being smited for overconfidence and pride. Overuse of giddy terms like “Barack and Roll” and “Obamentum” and snide ones like “McFailin” are being punished. Or perhaps it is just a test of faith.
At any rate, I offer a truce and promise to recite the following everyday:
God of polls, grant me the serenity to accept the numbers I cannot change; the courage to work for change through real action; and the wisdom to understand subtle polling errors.
I hope this is enough and you'll consider giving us better numbers today.
Every election cycle we are seeing more and more polling. In 2000 you had to make due with the occasional national poll and the even scarcer state poll. The 2004 election had so much polling it sparked a cottage industry of part-time election polling pundits such as “The Mystery Pollster,” Mark Blumenthal, now part of the Pollster.com team.
Kos has commissioned a few polls over the years and today announced even more including, yes, yet one more daily tracking poll. The Kos tracking poll (by Research 2000), which debuts Thursday, brings to 4 the number of polls tracking the Presidential race. For those of us who check in on these polls daily, this is great terrible. With each new tracker the number of potential blog posts increases multiplicatively (that's a real word). You can write about why this poll agrees with that or why this poll disagrees with that or why one of them is biased against your candidate, etc. To cut through the mind-numbing haze of decimals, I present a simple time saver: The Open Left Tracking Poll Average. Yes, Obama is behind but it's not that bad. Follow along.
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John McCain heads to Missouri on Monday with mentee Sarah Palin in tow. It caught my attention because it's one of the few traditional battleground states where McCain is actually ahead. In fact Chris Bowers' latest Presidential forecast has it in the "Solid McCain" category with a margin of 8 percent.
With McCain behind in so many important swing states, why is he making a joint appearance with his sidekick in a state Bush won in 2004 with a 7 percent margin? It might be because of how much time Barack Obama has spent there, 7 visits this summer. Obama hasn't spent more time in another state (two others he visited 7 times as well). Even if Obama fails to close the gap in Missouri he's forced the McCain campaign to spend some of it's limited time/money in the state.
The chess match between the campaigns involves several components but one important one is face time by the candidates in critical states. An analysis of campaign appearances by the two Presidential nominees appears on the jump (with some surprises).
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The Republican National Convention is over and even as I watched it I felt it was actually a parody of a political convention. Or, as others have compared it to, like some sort of weird political reality show. Maybe “The Surreal Campaign” or something. We even had some protesters out of central casting during last night's episode. Nice touch. Gritty.
And it just gets weirder. TPM is reporting and ABC is repeating that the green backdrop we saw John McCain in front of at the beginning of last night's speech was, when you looked at the bigger image on the video wall, the front lawn of a middle school in North Hollywood. Why? Nobody knows for sure but may have been they wanted Walter Reed Army Medical Center and instead got Walter Reed Middle School. Uh oh, somebody call the set designers!
Yesterday McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said “This election is not about issues.” Boy, he wasn't kidding. Go back and look at the transcript from Sarah Palin's VP speech tonight and you won't find much talk about solutions to problems. As Barack Obama said today:
“I guess I don't blame them because if you don't have any issues to run on, I guess you want it all to be about personalities,” Obama said, adding later that “Republicans are really bad at governing, but they're good at running campaigns.
For this campaign, Davis says the McCain strategy is to avoid the issues because:
“This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
What comprises that composite view? Part of it must be babies. Yes, this year they will be wrapping themselves not only in flags but in babies. This is an astute political move I suppose: who opposes cute little babies? And so we got shot after shot tonight of the Palin's newest addition being held by, I think, every family member at one point or another. I think the strategy is something like: I dare you NOT to vote for this baby.
Besides the baby there was also an appeal to Bubba. Not Bill in particular but any and all voters who consider themselves “regular” and “hard working” and from either a small town or a narrow perspective. In this Palin certainly succeeded in firing up the base. And so the McCain campaign has shifted from one targeting the maverick middle to a Rove-style approach of motivating the right and demonizing your opponent. I'm not sure how this will work when those calling themselves Democrats outnumber those calling themselves Republicans by almost 10 points. Nevertheless we're back to identity politics. And babies.
The Nielsen ratings are in for last night's Republican National Convention featuring George W. Bush, Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman:
RNC Tuesday: 21.5 million viewers
Compare that to the Democrats Tuesday when Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton were the main speakers:
DNC Tuesday:26 million
That 21.5 million represents a slight decrease for Republicans compared to 2004 when they drew 22.2 million viewers. Thanks to mother nature, the RNC lost their first night. Democrats drew over 22.3 million on their Monday.
Tonight Republicans might do better as people tune in to see what the heck Sarah Palin might say. The DNC third night, highlighted by Joe Biden, drew 24 million viewers. Barack Obama came in just under 40 million on Thursday.
Obama will be reaching even more viewers this Thursday when he appears on Bill O'Reilly's show. In terms of reaching large numbers it's a good bet since Fox was the highest rated channel for the Republican Convention in 2004 and will likely be again the night John McCain accepts his party's nomination. I still prefer the “starve Fox of credibility” that a bunch of Republicans talking ONLY to themselves would help facilitate but you've got to like Obama's chances to make O'Reilly look silly if he tries his usual schtick. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a subdued O'Reilly, however.
What's the media narrative this morning on Sarah Palin? The top online news sites, in some order, tend to be Yahoo, CNN and MSNBC with the NY Times the top “newspaper” website. Nicely, as of this writing, both CNN and MSNBC have a picture of President Bush on the video wall as the front page image from last night's Republican convention. Here are the Palin-related headlines on the main pages:
Palin steps forward to fill in blanks as national candidate
McCain More Likely to Drop Palin, Bookmakers Say
Palin gets chance to fire back with speech
Palin reignites culture wars
NY Times
Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual
Wooing Conservatives Pays Off for McCain
Palin Disclosures Raise Questions on Vetting
Not really the glowing group of headlines we saw on the weekend which tended to focus on “game changer” and “another maverick.” In the last 48 hours the traditional press has been much tougher on the Palin pick. The right will explain this as media elitism and use it to excite their base. But the media may also be, in the wake of the Bush “crony” years, not so willing to give a pass to the promotion of unqualified people to important positions. When you give, mostly, a free pass to a President to start a war of choice and later get called on it, it possibly makes you more sensitive to giving free passes in the future.
The headline may seem counterintuitive because a Sunday CNN poll showed Obama up by only 1 point while polls Monday showed Obama with 7 and 8 point leads. But all the polling we have for the August 29-31 period is remarkably consistent in the level of support for Barack Obama:
USA Today: 50 Obama, McCain 43
CBS News: 48 Obama, McCain 40
Rasmussen: 49 Obama, McCain 46
Update: Rasmussen now 51-45 (by fladem, HT Conspiracy)
Gallup: 49 Obama, McCain 43
CNN/OPC: 49 Obama, McCain 48
These 5 polls, conducted over the last 3 days of August (except USA Today, last 2 days) average out to exactly this:
49.0 Obama, McCain 44.0
This 5-point lead is modestly better than the 3-to-4 point leads Obama averaged for most of the summer and certainly better than the national polls just before the convention which were showing a nearly tied race. I suspect, as I've predicted before (to charges of party pooping), that after the Republican Convention this will shrink this a bit and the end result will only be a modest improvement for Obama. However, the Sarah Palin story fiasco may change that. Still hard to say how that will play out.
But look at how consistent Obama's number is at 49 plus or minus 1 while McCain's number ranges from 40 to 48 and the “undecideds/others” range from 3 to 12 percent. This could be random chance but I have another theory to propose.
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Obama 48, McCain 40. It's only one poll and worth not getting too excited about. Just yesterday we got the CNN poll showing only a 1-point lead for Barack Obama. So split the difference and you get a 4.5 point lead, not much different than the average from this summer.
Aside from the 8-point lead the CBS poll shows the other findings are particularly bad for John McCain (although I'm certain the bad news for McCain is really good news in disguise, somehow). First, 71% of those polled said they watched the convention. I assume this means they watched “part” of it. This is really a surprising number to me given the declining viewership for political conventions in the last 30 years. While TV viewing of the 2008 DNC was sharply up from 2004, the biggest night (Thursday) still brought under 40 million viewers. Either the different nights brought sharply different audiences or, more likely, in addition to the TV numbers people watched it live online or later on YouTube or Obama's website. Probably a combination. Even 63% of Republicans reported watching which surprises me even more.
But this still isn't the really bad news for McCain.
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Here's a theme that is evident in the comments on all the Palin posts today: We should keep our criticism of Palin on issues not on personal characteristics and certainly not on gender.
This seems clearly right at first but then there's this from conservative pundit Ramesh Ponnuru:
Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?
No, I can't say that with a straight face. Even Dan Quayle had 12 years in Congress and nearly 2 as a Senator before his selection. And the first woman selected (24 years ago!), Geraldine Ferraro, had 6 years in Congress. Both Quayle and Ferraro held law degrees.
Imagine if McCain had selected a man in his 40s, Governor of a state with a smallish population who…..oh wait we don't have to imagine this, McCain had someone just like this on his short list and he was rejected as being too much of a lightweight: Tim Pawlenty. Let's compare Pawlenty to Palin and see if gender played a role in this selection.
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– Has served less than 2 years as Governor of Alaska
– Pro-life
– Helped to pass an ethics reform bill
– Is accused of trying to get her ex-brother in law fired and last month fired the Commissioner of Public Safety. Investigation still underway.
– Has four five children. The oldest deploys to Iraq next month and youngest has Down's Syndrome.
– Big supporter of more drilling
– 2nd place, Miss Alaska Beauty pageant, 1984
There appears to be a battle at her Wiki page as “brother in law” recently disappeared from it although an account of the scandal still exists without those words. This pick would seem to eliminate and indeed could reverse the “not ready for the job” argument the McCain campaign has aimed at Obama. Can they argue Palin is ready to be President of the United States? Your take?
Yesterday afternoon I cautioned against the idea there would be a large sustained bounce for the Obama-Biden campaign because the attention immediately shifts to the Republicans with their VP announcement and convention and because the audiences for these events have shrunk significantly over the last few decades.
I still think those reasons have merit and if, 10 days from now, you aren't seeing the Obama lead you expect, I think that will explain part of why. Nevertheless a few things have changed in the last 30 hours.
1. That was some speech by Obama tonight. We knew it would be good but that exceeded my expectations.
2. A reader alerted me yesterday to TV ratings which have been far higher that 2004. That year many stations chose not to air the convention on Tuesday night so only 5.9 million saw it. This year it was 26 million. Wednesday brought 24 million viewers, also a large increase over 2004.
3. Those increased viewers are significant just for the extra eyes and ears but they also heard from Hillary and Bill who strongly endorsed Obama and if even 1 or 2 percent of the electorate votes for Obama as a result (or even better switches from McCain) then the significance is magnified.
4. The big night is always Thursday and I expect 2008 will once again exceed 2004. Obama does have a lot very enthusiastic supporters and (hopefully) a significant number of undecided voters tuned in to help make a decision.
5. Hurricane Gustav. Oh the delicious irony. A hurricane bearing down on the gulf coast just as the Republican convention gets underway and on the 3-year anniversary of Katrina. I hope nobody gets hurt and New Orleans doesn't reflood but I hope it's a very near miss (and then fizzles). At any rate, if you thought the Republican mishandling of Katrina would go by unnoticed I think this makes that very unlikely. (Oh and memo to the Bush Administration: THERE'S A HURRICANE COMING! IT'S COMING AND YOU NOW HAVE ADVANCED WARNING! Get Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location immediately. Chickens.)
All of this adds up, in my mind, to the potential for a real bounce. Before I saw things going back to the 3-4 point national lead Obama had for most of the summer. Now I expect that may go higher. The question will be, can the campaign sustain it?
Some of the most recent ads to attack Barack Obama focus on age and experience. They use old clips from both of the Clintons and others to help make this point.
My own take on the “age” question has always been this: most people who are bad at making decisions continue to make bad decisions even as they get older. But rather than spend time citing evidence of Obama's tendency to make good decisions (of which there is plenty) I'd like to offer this very brief overview on presidential age. Obama would take office when he is about 47.5 years old which is only about 7 years less than average. Here are the Presidents that were younger than Obama (alternatively, they had less life experience):
Theodore Roosevelt, 42
John Kennedy, 43
Bill Clinton, 46
Ulysses S. Grant, 46
That's pretty good company on the whole. On the other end of the spectrum is Ronald Reagan who was elected at 69. Most experts agree he was showing signs of Altzheimers while still in office. Outside of Reagan, there have only been 4 other Presidents who took office within TEN years of McCain's current age (72 tomorrow):
William Henry Harrison, 68
Zachary Taylor, 64
James Buchanan, 65
George HW Bush, 64
Quite a distinguished crew there. Two who died not long into office and another routinely on the list of worst presidents. Somewhere in here is the makings of a good response to the age charge.
Chris Bowers is feeling no bounce, so far. I tend to think there will be little to no O-bounce for the following reasons:
1. Unlike some previous years, the conventions are back-to-back and this will obscure or cancel out any bounce in the Democrats direction.
2. Giving the length/coverage of the Dem primaries and the lateness in the year of the convention, Obama is more of a known quantity than, say, Kerry was in 2004. John McCain was already a celebrity due to his POW status, his tenure in the Senate, his run in 2000 and his frequent appearances on SNL and the Tonight Show. Known candidates are less likely to “bounce.”
3. Media coverage ain't what it used to be. The amount of airtime dedicated to convention coverage has declined over the last several decades. This reduces the possible bounce.
4. “Mass” Media ain't what it used to be (and maybe that's a good thing). Back before cable and the interweb a person looking to pass some time with media after dinner had few options. If it was convention season, guess what? You were watching the damn convention whether you wanted to or not because it was on all 4 of your stations. Today people who just want some after dinner entertainment have a thousand non-convention media choices. The result is fewer viewers.
5. The previous two points have resulted in, generally, smaller and small bounces according to this analysis by fladem.
All that said there are some counter arguments:
1. Obama's speech on Thursday could draw big ratings and if he knocks it out of the park it could persuade some undecideds.
2. The ratings for the Republican convention will probably be a little lower because of the “cottage cheese in lime jello” reason. It depends in part on who McCain's VP is. But even Republicans are probably less interested in watching given what most perceive as the likely outcome.
Add it all up and I expect only a return to Obama's summertime polling average lead….about 3-4 points. It may look like a bounce since some national polling shows a dead heat but I think of it more as the “true” state of the race. In November Obama will still have an enthusiasm edge I suspect and a turnout machine advantage as well.
I've watched all the prime time speeches and several of those leading up to them over the last two days mostly on PBS and MSNBC. Here are some quick observations:
1. Women. Okay, the two big speeches over the last two days were good (they better be) but one of the best things is that both were delivered by women. It's one thing to be a party that works for women and another to be a party with women front and center. Increasingly, Democrats are demonstrating both. Besides the moral benefits there is the electoral benefit of this. There are a) millions more women than men in the U.S. and b) an historically higher turnout rate on election day among women. Obama is already ahead with women but it would seal the election if he could further increase that margin. That said, Wednesday appears to be “tough men” night.
2. Themes. Quick, what was the main theme for Tuesday? Right, it was…. it was… unity no the economy, no, what was it? Not entirely clear, huh? Officially it was “Renewing America's Promise.” What's that mean? Sure there was some “economy” in there but not so much in Hillary's speech. Collectively it was a bit hodge podge.
3. Katrina. Wasn't there a big storm three years ago that nearly wiped out a major American city? Wasn't such a storm foreseen by all the experts years ahead and forecast by all the weatherpeople days ahead and yet the Bush Adminstration said “No one saw this coming”? Wasn't this morally unconscionable and a perfect example of the inability of the Republican-controlled government (2005) to do even the most basic “government things” right? Remember “Brownie”? Isn't it a perfect example of cronyism and anti-expert governance? Don't we have the perfect visual to juxtapose against the devastation in New Orleans:
Why was Katrina barely mentioned? Wasn't the theme something to do with “Renewal”? Wouldn't this fit in? If I don't see the above photo in campaign ads repeatedly over the next several days (the 3-year anniversary) I think my head will explode.
4. How many cars do the McCain's own? Seriously, somebody has to ask this question.
5. I saw Bill Richardson interviewed on MSNBC and he looked good. Bearded Richardson equals insightful, devious, a little scary and Secretary of State. Unbearded Richardson equals Secretary of HUD.
6. I think Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann don't like each other. Matthews was having a bad day in general (or maybe a bad year). Maybe it was the wind messing up his hair but he was unusually testy and got angry at Olbermann at least once. See it here. I have to say I missed the commentary very little when watching it on PBS. And MSNBC didn't air the Schweitzer speech (NBC may have didn't either, see comments).
