A Light Hits The Gloom

Maybe it's stubborn optimism.  Perhaps it's simply not wanting to be left with nothing to write or talk about for the next four weeks.  But suddenly there has appeared a boomlet attempting to make the case that the 2008 presidential election is not quite over just yet.

Leading the parade, as per usual, is the sunny partisan hack, Hugh Hewitt, grasping the straw of an outlier CBS News/New York Times poll showing McCain within the margin of error.  His post headline even sounds a tad gloating.  And, yes, if you adjust the partisan weighting of the poll's sample to the 38% Donk/35% GOP/27% Independent proportion that has been set in stone for all but one presidential election of the past generation, McCain actually comes out half a point ahead.  But that is, as I say, an outlier; most national surveys have Obama up five to eight points.

Hugh's latest padawan, Beldar, tries to make lemonade from urine by spinning another McCain-Obama debate draw as an ominous failure of The Chosen One to deliver a "knockout blow":

[BO] had huge momentum and a big lead during the Democratic primaries, too — and still managed to barely win his party's nomination, despite the fact that his early delegate lead was banked and not subject to the erosion of new doubts.

The canaries in the coal mine here are the secondary post-debate headlines, the ones on the "analysis" pieces, from his very bestest of friends, the websites of the mainstream media:

• The Washington Post: Showdown Is More of a Letdown.

• The Washington Post: New Crisis. Old Ideas.

• The Washington Post: Hunting Small Game.

• The Los Angeles Times: Economic Issues Dominate Second Debate, Yet McCain and Obama Battle Mostly to a Draw

• The New York Times: Downturn in Decibels, Too.

Doncha know, friends and neighbors, that they want to write "Obama Obliterates McCain: Old Guy Led Drooling from the Stage"?

 

"He should be leading by twenty points by now — in this economy, after eight years of George W. Bush, this should be our year for a blow-out!" This is the secret whisper of every politically knowledgeable Democratic partisan. They worry that too many late deciders will decide against him.

They're right to worry.

Eh.  If you say so, Bill.  But False Messiah doesn't have to win in a landslide in order to win.  He doesn't need to win by TKO if he's already ahead on points on all judges' cards.  All you're really saying is that Barry hasn't put Maverick away yet.  But if he just trades baskets with Sailor this month and runs out the clock, he'll win just the same.  If McCain is to come from behind, he'll have to do things of which I just don't think he's capable - like become a born-again Reaganite, hang blame for the economy by sheer repetitive volume around the necks of the Democrats, proclaim supply side/pro-growth economic policies as the way back from the depressionary cliff, drop this "country first"/I'm more bipartisan than my opponent" drivel and give voters a reason to not just vote against Obama, but FOR him.  Be honest, dude: have you EVER seen this version of John Sith McCain?

In another post, Beldar invokes a historical analogy that dramatically redefines the threshold of optimism downward:

Instead, as Hugh noted earlier today, the polls remain whisker-tight, vibrating like a high note being played on a violin string. The Democratic "strategists" being interviewed for these articles are all cooperating in a very deliberate expectations game — hoping to depress their opponents psychologically to depress their voting turn-out statistically — but at some point that vibrating violin string must begin to seem like those shrieking notes from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 movie, Psycho. And — to stretch the analogy one delicious bit further — 1960 was the year in which the charismatic (but inexperienced) young Democrat was supposed to swamp the sweating and stubble-faced (but more experienced, especially in foreign affairs) Republican — and that race came down to a few tens of thousands of questionable votes in Daley-dominated Chicago and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. [emphasis added]

In other words, if the race DOES narrow down the stretch, we're right back to ACORN stealing the election for Barry O.  THIS is supposed to be encouraging?

But to be fair, Double-H and his cronies aren't the only righties putting a rose on the not-quite-yet-filled McCain political grave.  Jim Geraghty took his turn in the batting cage to whiff at Sidd Finch fastballs.  Summarized (since this post was so constructed as to make blockquoting all but impossible) is his spin:

1) It's a good thing we're at war with a collapsing economy, otherwise Obama would be up by twenty points.  Of course, the public incorrectly blames the GOP for the war and the collapsing economy when it's the Dems that are ultimately responsible for both, and if there was the perception of peace and prosperity the credit would redound much more to McCain than to B.O., just as it did for Bush41 running as the heir to the Reagan Revolution.  But other than all that, J-Ger's first point makes perfect sense.

2) The Taliban may have turned against its al Qaeda allies, which would mean that the situation in Afghanistan isn't quite as morose as has been depicted by our Democrat "friends".  But who the hell is paying any attention to that hellhole, or foreign policy at all, when transfixed by watching the Dow plummet as hair-raisingly as filling station price boards were skyrocketing this summer?

3) Everything has gone right for Obama, everything has gone wrong for McCain, and the media is so far up Barry's ass they can see what he's having for breakfast before he does, and yet McCain has not been "mathematically eliminated"....yet.  Kind of a variation on Beldar's "no knockout" argument above.

4) Team Hussein and its party and its media propagandists have so overplayed the race card that a significant Bradley Effect may be overstating Obama's polling by anywhere from two (his approximate underperformance versus polling in the Dem primaries) to as much as eight (Juan Williams' paranoia) percentage points.  But then J-Ger isn't really convinced it exists at all, unless he was attempting to seed a little pragmatic yet stereotypical racism for partisan political purposes.

I thought about building a small Bradley effect into my composite of state polling composites.  Actually, I DID build it in - as a proportionate offset to the ACORN (vote fraud) Effect, which had the additional happy benefit of simplifying the composite formula.

Then there is Geraghty's pseudonymical election season savant "Obi Wan Kenobi," who has proven to have a pretty good track record in '04 and '06 on crystal-balling where campaigns are REALLY headed, and he outright scoffs at any premature burial of, um, Darth Queeg:

"Any pessimism now is dumbness," he said as he appeared to me recently. "A few weeks ago every swing state was coming McCain's way and he had a national lead. And some polls showed him  four points and six points behind in New Jersey and New York. And now all that has gone away? Politics doesn't work like that. The American people, even in the midst of an unprecented economic crisis, don't react like that for any sustained period. Those patterns can reassert themselves."

Obi Wan talks to other Republicans, and back in July when Obama was way ahead and Republicans gloomy he said that the whole picture was likely to change dramtically by early September and McCain "would have a lead that lasted longer than just convention bounce."

Sobbingly relieved yet?  I might have allowed myself a small sigh if he had used the word "will" instead of "can" (see emphasized word above).  I'd also be a bit more impressed if he had shared his mid-summer prognostication with J-Ger in, you know, mid-summer, rather than retroactively.  But again, whoever this really is does have a pretty good track record.

I write the above to stoke you up to withstand what is becoming a recurring pattern with all of this forced optimism:

"First, Obama did not have a good debate. He didn't do what he needed to do. Be reassuring. His gestalt was shaky." He thinks Obama needed (and still needs) to go out and emulate John Kennedy in the 1960 debate. The popular perception today is that Kennedy was smooth and charismatic, but that wasn't what "sold" him, in Obi-Wan's assessment.  He suggests it was almost the opposite — it was Kennedy's seriousness, a demeanor that almost bordered on dour or grimness.

I.e. Obama didn't deliver a "knockout".  And if perceived "shakiness" was a knock on The One in the first bout, he improved on that score in the second.

As to "reassurance," remember upon which candidate's party the public is blaming the financial meltdown.  If you have two choices to lead the country, and you perceive one to be from the party that let the economy fall apart, s/he is not going to reassure you now matter how stalwart and experienced a leader s/he is.  You'll go with the other candidate simply because s/he is the other candidate.  AKA the "S/he can't do any worse" factor.

Second, Obi says the Palin phenomenon is for real. "Not only because she is so effective or appealing but because it spotllights McCain's decision-making. He can throw a tenstrike at the critical moment.  McCain's campaign has missed a few but basically it has shown resilence."

And if she was at the top of the ticket, I daresay Obama wouldn't be running away with the election, either.  But she's the running mate, and despite the length, breadth, and depth of Palinmania, people still do not vote for the bottom of the ticket.  Nor does the candidate at the top of the ticket get "dragged across the finish line" by anybody but themselves.

Third,  Obi-Wan has an indefatigable faith in the American people. "The American people figure this out, as long as you put the facts in front of them." He agreed with my assessment that the Republican Party is not the side you expect to sign off on large taxpayer-backed loans to those with no income, no job, and no assets. The media has spent decades portraying the GOP as heartless tightwads; now we're supposed to believe they were the ones urging Fannie and Freddie to give a half-million mortgage to cousin Louie who you wouldn't loan $200 to. "American voters pile up a knowledge bank." And Obi wonders why some Reaganites "forget to trust the people. They are already starting to figure it out. They dislike the Democrats in Congress already and they eventually sort it all out. Again, the economy can play McCain's way."

But...the American people DON'T have all the facts in front of them.  And even if they did, they're spending too much time panicking to pay attention, much less ponder them.  The American people are also the same bunch that twice elected Bill Clinton, and handed Congress back to the neoBolshevik Pelosi/Reid Democrats last cycle.  That doesn't make the American people "stupid," but it does mean they - we - are far too fallable for our own good.

In short, we get it right more often than not when it is clearly explained to us.  But whom do we have to not just explain the truth about the financial mess but also unravel and/or cut Gordianly through the thicket of lies the Donks have woven around it?  The man who has neither the ability nor the inclination to do so; the man whose answer to seemingly every economic-related question is to piss on earmarks; and whose answer to just about every OTHER question is to preach a "We're all Americans" bipartisanism that would be teeth-gnashingly out of place in any PARTISAN election campaign but has been rendered functionally irrelevant by recent meltdown-related events, and their likely congressional electoral consequences.

Fourth — for me this was the the kind of insight that makes him as a Jedi Master — "Media bias may be McCain's biggest asset in this race. First, [for the past eight years] they built McCain up into the Maverick hero [every time he disagreed with Bush] and that insulates him from the too-close-to-Bush charge. Then they can't leave Palin alone and she keeps hitting out of the park just as they build her audience up. And now they've decided the election is over and given Obama an eight point lead. So if he starts to fade at any point in the next month that seems like a crash and cause a panic."

"I guarantee you, right now there is some realist in the Obama camp who is petrified of any falloff in the polls. Because if Obama slips, he could fall fast. McCain's already gotten up off the mat once this cycle, when he was supposed to be dead in the primary. He faced a meltdown and it didn't happen; you almost never see candidates and campaigns who can pull out of a crash dive . . .

Yes, McCain did get up off the mat once this cycle.  But that took place over the course of SIX MONTHS, not four weeks, and was influenced by many factors - Rudy Giuliani's curious and ultimately fatal "wait 'till Florida" strategy, Mitt Romney's "peak too soon" strategy, and Mike Huckabee's out-of-left-field wildcard/divide & conquer dynamic that kept Romney from unifying the conservative GOP primary vote, leaving the door open for Maverick to abscond with the nomination.  Right now and through November 4th it's going to be the "economic crisis" 24/7, and despite taking some token swipes at economic straight talk, McCain simply isn't telling that story.  Even if he did, and was any good at doing so, his "brand" was as demolished by his disastrous campaign suspension and foray into the bailout negotiations as that of his party even before Wall Street collapsed.  And if memory serves, the (original) distinctiveness of his "brand" was the top selling point for his candidacy.

Even I can't swallow the "media bias is McCain's biggest asset" whopper.  Instead I direct your attention to one word in Obi-Wan's last 'graph: "If".  Now tie back into the media bias factor.  If Obama isn't as far ahead as Enemy Media polling portrays, do you really think the press will stop depicting and pushing a "messianic" landslide meme?  Even to the point of sacrificing the professional credibility they already flushed down the "leg-tingling" commode months and months ago?  This cycle pollsters won't get serious at the end to save public face if the race is actually closer than it's being suggested.  That's the only way they have to ensure that it won't be close.  And if they're wrong, to the extent of McCain actually winning, nobody remembers that kind of thing in the next cycle.  After all, they have more Democrats to get elected by any means necessary.

Think of it as the Enemy Media dragging Senator Hussein's dead weight across the finish line.

Last, and probably least, is the Toe-Sucker himself (who predicted an Obama win way back in the midst of McCain's convention bounce and brief national lead), who actually makes about the best "don't give up hope" argument of the bunch:

October may see the end of Obama's surge: He's peaking too soon.

Once the Democrat is seen as the clear leader and likely winner, the spotlight will inevitably shift to him. And he may not benefit from the increased attention.

Obama didn't do well when he last emerged on top, in later Democratic primaries. The more it appeared that Hillary Clinton would lose, the more voter concerns over Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright cost him state after state in the later primaries.

Obama still beat Clinton because he'd already amassed a sufficient delegate lead earlier on. That dynamic doesn't apply in the general election.

Put another way, September surprises aren't as politically handy as October surprises.  And if these were ordinary circumstances, I would share the hope that enhanced scrutiny of Obamanomics in a Great Depression context and the recurring theme of B.O.'s serial dalliances and discipling with Marxist radicals would generate sufficient voter heebie-jeebies that a McCain close wouldn't be a matter of if, but of how big.

Unfortunately, these are not ordinary circumstances.  And the Republican candidate is ill-equipped to overcome them.

So am I now in the Allahpundit Pessimism Underground?  Well, you know me, every election season I crunch my own polling numbers so as not to have to endure the daily rollercoaster morale ride.  Take a gander at the left sidebar widget: I project Obama with a one point popular vote lead but a huge lead in the Electoral College.  The popular vote figure is based upon polling composites of all fifty states weighted by percentage of the total Electoral College vote, with each polling composite being the average of the most recent seven days' likely voter poll results.

The good news?

(1) The race never really stopped being "tight," but rather has oscillated within a very small range.

(2) I'm showing McCain trailing but within the margin of error in enough "battleground" states that if he ran that particular table, he'd reach 288 Electoral Votes.  Also, it appears that his slide since the Wall Street Meltdown has finally bottomed out.

The bad news?

(1) Given the true elasticity of the race, an apparently small lead is much bigger than it looks.

(2) I've yet to see a "tightening" where it would matter, i.e. in the aforementioned "battleground" states.  Obama has run away with the "blue" battlegrounds, and he's flipped eight of the "red" ones at last count.  Those are the ones McCain has to somehow get back.  And I have no earthly idea how he does that.

Bottom line: Is it over?  No.  A McCain comeback is still possible.  But it is also highly unlikely.  And I am not about to allow a bunch of faux sunshine to be blasted up my bloomers.

All I'll ultimately be left with is the lamentation I offered eight months ago and the might-have-beens of what a Fred Thompson-Sarah Palin ticket might have been able to accomplish.  That's pretty thin gruel to take with me into the indefinite, self-inflicted national purgatory to come.