Aug 20 2008
Obama Poll Crash Expands! The Year Of The Center Continues
Boy, this is no way to limp into your party’s convention! I posted earlier (here and here) on a slew of polls showing Obama slipping against McCain. Even more polls are out this evening showing the same trend, an Obama poll slip. Â In the first post I noted I predicted Obama would likely limp into his convention down in the polls – seems I was right.
First there is the CBS/NY Times Poll indicating a slip in the last two weeks:
Republican John McCain has cut Democrat Barack Obama’s nationwide lead in half, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll. Obama now has the support of 45 percent of registered voters, with John McCain closing in at 42 percent. The margin of error is three points.Â
Two weeks ago, Obama’s lead over McCain was 45 percent to 39 percent.
…
Like the CBS News Poll completed earlier this month, each candidate is backed by more than three quarters of voters in his own party, with independents closely divided, narrowly favoring McCain.Â
Emphasis mine. Â As I noted back on August 4th Obama is losing the moderate middle of the electorate, which means he will end up losing the election if this trend continues. Â This is why McCain is smart to keep his eye on the middle of the electorate instead of worrying about the unpredictable and unreliable far right who have threaten to sit out the election about once a week. That is no place to put faith in voter turnout.
If the Far Right do sit out this election, then that leaves the far left and middle voters as the majority of the votes that will be cast. If McCain can steal the middle voters Obama has no shot at winning the election – whether the far right sit out or not. The threats to sit out because of McCain is moderate on some issues have created their just rewards. McCain has to keep as much of his base as possible, but he cannot do so to the point he loses the moderate middle.
Obama has the opposite problem, since far left liberals make up a much larger portion of the Democrat Base. The GOP base is chock full of moderates, which is why they keep winning the Presidency and only Democrats who run as faux conservatives can challenge them. Obama has gone as far to the middle as he can afford to already, flip flopping on major issues dear to the liberal mindset (e.g., FISA laws updates, Hand Guns, Abortion, etc).Â
The other poll out is the NBC/WSJ poll:
Overall, Obama holds a three-point lead over McCain, 45-42 percent, which is within the survey’s margin of error. That’s down from Obama’s six-point advantage last month, 47-41 percent.
…
For Obama, he receives the support of just one in two voters who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and he trails his Republican rival on handling terrorism, the war in Iraq and international crises like the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia.
The fact Obama has not been able to shut up his more mouthy supporters critical of Clinton (nor has Clinton stopped her anti-Obama supporters either) means there is no healing going on in the Democrat Party. In addition, Obama is very liberal at his core, and very two-faced and cagy in his PR projected image. He is a far left liberal trying to hide it, and doing a damn poor job of it.
Clinton got at least half the democrat primary votes (if not a majority), which means 50% of her supporters are not in Obama’s camp. Â That means Obama is losing 25% of the democrat primary vote. A vote that tore up voter turnout records. Obama cannot win with that much defection from the Clinton camp, which was clearly the more ‘centric’ of the two campaigns. Â
And with Dems like Lieberman supporting McCain, these more hawkish, more centric and less gullible Clinton supporters will find comfort in supporting McCain. Â Especially if the far right continues to tear him down like many are doing (the dismal Mark Levin comes to mind). If the far right hate McCain, that takes all the risk out of supporting a GOP candidate.
This is the year of the moderate middle. It is not the year of the polarized fringes. Â Nor is it the year of mushy policies, feel good policies or rampant capitulation. People still want resolve and someone to fight for their views. They want a strong leader who will protect this nation from its enemies. The term ‘moderate middle’ is sometimes confused with dispassion or muddled thinking. In reality those of us in the middle are very strong minded and willing to stand up to any and all comers to support our points. Â That is why we flourish outside the party fringes which have been the cultish clubs of party and purity.Â
To be independent is the same as being a entrepreneur – to fight the harder fight alone, outside the stereotypes and cliches. It requires backbone, resolve and determination.  The more the fringes demand unity and purity of thinking, the more the independent, self motivated, self thinking voters move into the non-aligned camp.  And it is this group which will determine the direction of the nation over he next 4 years.
The party fringes insult and threaten this group at great risk and cost to their electoral success. More here on the falling poll numbers.
Update: Even more here as the left begins to sweat:
While some here think everything is going just fine, and that Obama has a secret plan lying in wait, I ask you to think back a year ago. Imagine if someone had told you that the most charismatic Democratic speaker in a decade would be in a dead-heat with a Republican has-been corrupt waffler – you would have laughed in their face. After eight years of George Bush? No way, people are fed up – that’ll never happen.
Well, that’s the reality today. This race is a dead heat and is up for grabs both in the national polls as well as in key states like Ohio, Florida, Missouri, etc. Face reality folks – something isn’t working.Â
Obama isn’t working. He is vacuous and slippery, cold and elitist, and the most inexperienced candidate for President to ever run a national campaign for a major party. Did people really think America would not ask questions, demand some backbone, desire clarity and demand we get the best of the best for the job? Clearly some very deluded liberals on the left did.
Hey – didja hear? McCain’s in favor of the idea of re-instating the draft. That should go over well with young voters. I expect a…. wait for it… SURGE in voting for McCain! YAY!
Yup, let’s forcifully enscript young people into a conflict that young people are super-majority against. THAT will go over well. The GOP might as well kiss the young vote away, and wave dramatically like it was the end of a Jane Austen novel.
No he’s not. Watch the entire exchange uncut, and it’s clear that he meant nothing of the sort.
The only people who want to reinstate the draft are democrats. (Charley Rangel, specifically)
And this is what Obama supporters are down to? Making up idiotic claims like this, where one watch of the video lets you know the claim is fake?
Here’s the video of the exchange – it’s all about health care for veterans. Watch it for yourself – a woman asks a long, rambling question about health care veterans and McCain responds to the meat of her question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3msRsdt6bWY
At the end of her long statement, she threw in a comment about the draft, but in his answer McCain ignored that completely while giving her a very good answer to the rest of her question, all about improving the VA system.
And this is supposed to say that McCain is for a draft? Wow, the left is passing desperation and heading into flat-out psychosis!
There is the unexpected in politics.
Debka is reporting, this Thursday morning, that a Russian
carrier battle group is heading for the Syrian port of Tartus and
will arrive in about five days.
They are saying the plan is for Russia to install itself into
permanent bases in Syria and install Iskandia “nuclear capable”
missiles in Syria. This would appear to bring forwards the looming
Middle East War by a lot. (In the next few days?)
I don’t know.
But Israel has very little time left if it is going to take out Iran’s
nuclear weapons sites.
And it knows it.
How does that tie into this thread?
Well, it’s important but secondly, the world is getting serious very much
more quickly than anybody thought.
Can anyone really put BHO in as commander-in-chief under these
very dangerous circumstances?
I’m betting most people won’t take that risk.
breschau:
One of the reasons your guy is not double digits ahead is that you guys keep coming up with that kind of silly nonsense and actually expect people to believe it.
Put together with hanging out with billionares while you prattle on about big money corrupting politics and you have the modern day Democrat party.
I think that some hardliners on the right are just miffed that they did not prove to be more influential in the party. Yesterday some guy informed me that it was not possible to be for abortion rights and be a Republican. Well, yes it is. Just like it is possible to be a Democrat and be prolife. Congressman Ellsworth is my Congressman, he is a blue dog Democrat and he is prolife. Rudy is most certainly a Republican and yet he is not.
Not everyone fits into a neat little box.
But you can count on the fact that if McCain picks someone for VP that these people do not like, they will have a fit.
“Obama has a secret plan lying in wait”? Umm – exactly who is proposing that, again? I haven’t heard anything even coming close to suggesting that.
Unless, of course, the “secret plan” involves “announcing a VP”, and “holding a convention” – both of which will cause a slight bump (admittedly, for both candidates – though I’m getting increasingly curious about the reaction from the base to McCain’s VP). Or maybe the “secret plan” is “attend a debate”? Ooooh – how nefarious!
1. It’s still August. The election is 3 months away, it’s still summertime, and the Olympics are still going on. A whole lot of people haven’t even started paying attention yet.
2. No VPs yet.
3. No conventions yet.
4. No debates yet.
5. National polls don’t mean dick. Electoral votes are where it is at – and yes, some of these are too close to call, but we’ve known about them for months. Was anyone calling Ohio or Florida or Missouri for either candidate back in June?
I understand that pundits need to talk about *something*, and TV shows need to talk about *something*, and blogs need to write about *something*. But drawing any conclusions based upon the trifling amount of current data is seriously flawed. Get back to me in a month, when those first 4 points are no longer relevant.
“And this is supposed to say that McCain is for a draft? Wow, the left is passing desperation and heading into flat-out psychosis!”
No, it’s called a political “feint”. Ever hear the story about Lyndon Johnson and the pig? Well – I just made you “deny it”.
I’m not saying I would actually be in favor of this (though I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed either), but getting “McCain is for the draft” out into the meme would then cause him to have to spend way too much time denying it. Then, that would lead into questions being asked like “Well, without a draft, how are we going to do [x] and [y], which you proposed?” Then, he has to spend time talking about that too.
And this is why so many people hate politics – lying works.
Okay, so let’s have this election on the basis of “McCain want’s a draft”, which is demonstrably false; and “Obama voted to kill living babies!”
Which is actually true.
Talk about “losing all credibility” !
A more suitable question to Obama would be
“why are you putting your alias name on the ballot?”
His legal name is Barry Soetoro Ma.
Everybody knows it.
Next week should be interesting.
dave m:
I am really, really trying to figure out what the point of this “name” nonsense is. Let’s give in all the way to the crazy, and say – sure, okay, whatever, that’s his name. We’ll change it from Barrack Obama to Barry Soetoro Ma. Everything else about him is the same – but the name under his picture is different.
So?
Do you think there’s anyone out there thinking to themselves, “Well, I could’ve voted for someone named ‘Barrack Hussein Obama’ – but ‘Barry Soetoro Ma’? No way, man – that name just FREAKS ME OUT!”
This about sums it up
Looks like I was wrong about which story was going to get the “bumper sticker” treatment – instead of “McCain supports reinstating the draft!”, it’s “McCain can’t remember how many houses he has!”
WOW – look at all those discussion links. You can tell the bloggers are bored.
This is, honestly, just about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. But, since the GOP was responsible for introducing the “elitist” and “out of touch” labels, they really can’t complain when it’s turned against them.
AJ,
Obama’s drop in the polls is not due to a loss of the moderate middle. In fact, Obama is the one pivoting to the middle of late (FISA, Gang of 10’s off-shore oil drilling concept) while McCain increasingly moves to the right. The loss is primarily due to an effective negative ad campaign McCain has run against Obama since shortly before Obama’s overseas trip. McCain has created doubts about Obama by focusing the media/blog/political discussion on McCain’s attacks on Obama and Obama’s responses – it keeps the focus on the underlying issue McCain is raising about Obama. Obama hasn’t helped matters with a few bad decisions/statements himself.
Obama’s only option at this point is to fight fire-with-fire. His campaign appears to realize that as reflected by the recent roll out of negative ads against McCain by Obama and Democratic support groups. If Obama plays it smart, he can define McCain in a negative light like McCain has done to Obama over the last month.
There are a lot of McCain statements/gaffes that Obama can hammer him on. For example, I can’t believe that McCain actualy said that he couldn’t remember how many houses he owns. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/21/mccain-doesnt-know-how-ma_n_120322.html. Or claiming that Obama shouldn’t be trusted because he has “the ambition to be president” when in McCain’s own memoirs he admitted that “In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.” http://www.backstreets.com/btx/viewtopic.php?t=110912&sid=63946d93bbe39b1ea568a382b5fd2b42
It is really unfortunate because that means we will likely have another negative/attack kind of election rather than a substantive debate about the serious issues our country is facing. I was naively hoping that maybe this year would be a little different since both candidates were not strongly tied to the party leadership. Why is it that the GOP only knows how to run nasty types of campaigns and that they are so damn good at it!
As breschau said, it is too early to start making predictions now. Historically, the VP pick, convention and debates have had a significant impact when the race is close heading into these events. None of these have happened yet. We also have to see if Obama can effectively turn the focus on McCain by attacking his policies/statements and hammer home the question – are we really better off now than we were 8 years ago? I know most of the people on this blog think Bush has been great for the country, but Bush’s dismal approval rating should make even you folks realize that a large majority of the country would answer that question “no”. That is the way Obama needs to frame this election to win and he has done a poor job thus far in that regard.
I sure hope that housing meme sticks around! It’s the perfect opening to bring back Tony Rezko, the convicted felon who’s one of Obama’s original backers.
“The McCain campaign is happily returning fire. “Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?†McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Thursday.
The convicted felon Rogers referred to is Tony Rezko, who played a role in helping Obama expand the $1.65 million mansion Obama purchased $300,000 below the list price on Chicago’s South Side in 2005. Rezko’s sister, Rita, coincidentally purchased land adjacent to the Obama’s property on the same day, at the full list price, and later sold a parcel of it to the Obama’s which made the Obama’s yard bigger.
Before Obama bought the house he had assisted Rezko in securing millions of tax dollars for housing developments as an Illinois state legislator.
Rezko was convicted on 16 of 24 federal corruption counts earlier this year. ”
http://townhall.com/Columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/08/21/shady_house_deal_plagues_obama
“Over the Fourth of July Weekend, the Washington Post revealed Obama had also secured a reduced mortgage for the same home, on top of the Rezko’s discount, saving him more than $300 a month in mortgage payments. “Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois. The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago,†Post reporter Joe Stephens wrote.”
Breschau,
You nailed it – the house kerfluffle actually is going to hurt Obama, who looks too distracted and unserious already.
Someone needs to remind Team Obama the number of homes the McCain’s own is irrelevant to the major issues on the minds of Americans.
If you ever wanted to look lost and confused, this is one of the better ways to pull it off.
AJStrata
AJ:
Wow, do I think you really missed it on this one. Look at the memeorandum list – it’s already huge. I can’t remember where I read it, but one blogger said this was a perfect storm because it’s an easy to grasp concept, and it’s perfect late-night comedian fodder. Leno and Letterman are going to be all over this – let alone what The Daily Show is going do with it.
Steve Benen had my favorite line so far: “By struggling to count his own number of homes, McCain has done Democrats an enormous favor. I’ve seen some equate McCain with Grandpa Simpson, and I’ve seen some equate McCain with Mr. Burns. It turns out, he’s both.”
I don’t care who are you – that’s funny, right there.
Yeah, it’s irrelevant to the issues. But so are lapel pins, and arugula, and bowling scores. So is putting out promotional posters in Germany that are actually in German!!, and taking a vacation in Hawaii. But the Right has been hammering those points over and over and over again, and it’s been working. The whole “biggest celebrity in the world” line has been repeated HOW many times in the past two weeks alone? Since when is “he’s too popular” a bad thing?
Please note that McCain’s approval rating has not gone up recently – the polls are changing because Obama’s approval rating has gone WAY down. Why? Because negative campaigning works.
Detailed, nuanced policy explanations may be the meat that you and I feed on – but it doesn’t work on most voters, and especially not on the public at large. A combination of short attention spans and general overall ignorance means that, if you can’t put a message on a bumper sticker, it won’t work.
“I want us to win in Iraq.” Simple, neat, easy. Now, if somebody asks the follow-up question of: “Can you define ‘win’?”, then it gets trickier. But still, the message sticks.
“McCain’s economic advisor called us ‘a nation of whiners’.” Easy. “Obama wants to kill babies.” Stupid, but easy. And “McCain can’t remember how many homes he owns” – real easy. This one sticks – keep an eye out for polls a week or from now.
Conman:
Well, looks like I repeated a lot of what you said. Sorry, I responded to AJ before I read your comment.
Breschau,
I noticed the blogger list. But these folks represent a small fraction of the electorate. There have been similar blog-bursts on other topics which ended up being a blip on the political landscape.
Yes, negative campaigning can work, but it has to be done right. McCain is focusing his attacks on issues near and dear to the electorate (national security, energy, Iraq).
That’s the subtle difference between a successful effort and a wasted effort that can backfire.
Blog attention means nothing.
I heard a pundit say after the attach on McCain saying he made up the cross in the dirt story … just when you thought they could not get any lower.
Obama History on Abortion and Infanticide … I know some of this has already been out, but the more Obama lies; more people come out with additional facts.
So, AJ – the economy isn’t an “issue near and dear to the electorate”? I think a few people out there might disagree.
And that’s where Obama is going with this.
“I guess if you think being rich means you gotta make $5 million, and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you think the economy was fundamentally strong.”
Hopefully, this can then work its way around to the fact that McCain’s tax plan is going to save him and his wife nearly $400,000 per year. That should be fun.