The Candidates
I. So now we’re talking about whether Governor Tim Pawlenty or Governor Sarah Palin would be better in assisting Senator John McCain, who will succeed him in 2012, whether he’ll serve just one term, which single state we need to break off from Obama’s side in order to become the frontrunner in this race, are we going to win Connecticut, Michigan, and Massachusetts, even!?, isn’t Obama’s campaign going to implode –
Don’t pop the champagne just yet.
Throughout this entire primary season, Mr. McCain’s been quite a lucky man. This months-old article from Time Magazine sums it up quite accurately:
Still there is no denying the good fortune that has helped McCain secure the nomination. Just two months ago, the Arizona Senator was still a distant long shot, operating a bare-bones campaign on a bank loan with a dilapidated staff of mostly unpaid advisors. Then almost everything broke his way: Mike Huckabee won Iowa, crippling the powerhouse campaign of Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani abandoned New Hampshire, allowing his moderate supporters to shift to McCain. Fred Thompson stayed in the race until South Carolina, bleeding enough votes away from Huckabee to allow McCain to win that key state. Even Huckabee seemed to cooperate, devoting crucial days to a foolhardy effort in Michigan and swearing off any negative attacks on McCain before he bowed out of the race Tuesday night.
And luck continues to break his way for now. As McCain celebrated wrapping up the nomination, the Democratic results painted a different picture of a divided party with more fireworks expected to come.
And his luck just continues to roll in. And it may be coming to an end. In case you hadn’t noticed — and who has, what, with the Clinton-Obama slugfest dominating the news for months — our candidate has been making quite a few gaffes, all of them concerning his main strength. Whether he’s confusing Shiites and Sunnis (twice?) or mixing up troop levels in Iraq (in his very best storyline, he’s put himself on defense), he’s got an irritating tendency to trip over his words sometimes. He’s got no wiggle room here — fair or not — due to his age. He simply has to be on top of his game.
More disturbingly, Senator Obama’s numbers have not been affected by his high-profile, much more serious problems. The story on Jeremiah Wright broke in the second week of March. Obama was ahead in the RCP head-to-head match-up 46-43 on the day before the story broke. A week after, McCain was ahead by 1% — 46-45, a four-point swing within the margin of error. In other words: nothing happened. The William Ayers story — one that, in my personal judgment, still has yet to be fully exploited — broke, and, once again, did nothing, and the recent snafu over this moron Pflager seems to have had, again, no effect. Obama’s wife has made a series of what could easily be called anti-American comments (and a rumored tape lurks below the depths!), but no one seems to care. Obama currently sits with a 1-point, statistically insignificant lead over John McCain. The fact that he’s endured potentially lethal blows is extremely worrisome.
There is a legitimate point in the fact that, given the indicators in the polls, Obama really should, in theory, be running away with the race. And although we know that Obama is not the public’s ideal of a ‘generic Democrat’ and that John McCain is far from a generic Republican, the fact that the public seems to simply not care that Obama is connected to such radicals and that he is married to someone with an odd propensity to let less-than-patriotic remarks slip just underscores how badly the public really does want to vote for a Democrat.
John McCain’s luck may be running out — he can’t hide from his gaffes anymore behind the in-fighting Democrats, and he can’t count on Obama’s surrogates to do his work for him. He needs a message, and he needs one now. Not two months from now. Now. He can’t be the not-Obama. Hell, he can’t be the not-Bush. He has to be John McCain. He has to come up with a substantive theme, underscored by his biography, that he can connect to issues. He ain’t doin’ it so far.
II. We in the conservative ‘blogosphere’ would do well not to insulate ourselves too much from the outside world, filled with regular voters feeling the proverbial pain at the pump, worried about the length of the war in Iraq, concerned with what they see as a health care crisis and an economy supposedly in shambles. In politics, like it or not, perception is reality. Whether the populace is ignorant or not (it is), we can’t win elections unless we’re able to connect with it. They don’t post comments on political blogs, they don’t spend hours a day waiting with bated breath for the new headline from Drudge, and they don’t obsess over the RCP average and whether Robert Novak is being a douchebag in his latest column. Conservative hardliners concerned with forcing a, um, principled candidate like Mitt Romney onto the ticket might enjoy seeing a milquetoast, ultra-rich family man in the White House, but the public’s yearnin’ for someone that feels their pain and wants to solve their problems. In Mr. Principle’s words, they want the ‘R’ to stand for reform; they don’t want just another pair of dolt pols with ‘R’s next to their names.
So what’s a winning strategy? Well, it’s not to beef up the ticket with the Most Beloved By the Base superlative winners, because, whether The Base wants to admit it or not (it doesn’t, and won’t — wait for a few people in the comments section to tell me that Real Conservatives always win when we actually nominate them [they don't] and that center-right candidates perform poorly [they don't]), it is not America and America is not The Base. John McCain doesn’t need the base. He’ll have the base. Obama, to paraphrase Dick Morris’ observation (I promise that I will never borrow from that man again), is chairing John McCain’s get-out-the-vote operation. What John McCain needs is a message of reform and competence, tied to issues of energy, national security, health care, and the economy, bolstered by a co-headliner with a record that shows that the team is serious about changing its path, in order to attract independents, moderates, and Hillary supporters, all of whom would like ‘change’ but are wary of Obama’s hard-left leanings, over-reliance on lofty rhetoric, and inexperience. Count me on the list of those that would be more than satisfied with a Palin vice-presidential nomination (and don’t you worry about her ‘lack of experience’ — McCain attacking Obama’s lack of experience is an ineffective path to go down in the first place, and anyone voting on experience is already voting against Obama, anyway), for that reason.
We can’t concede issues to Democrats. We can run on change. We can run on reform. We can run on competence. We can run on changing Washington. And we can win this — maybe even big. But we’ve got to get our acts together before the Democrats switch into full gear.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
An important milestone, Sarah Palin attracting support outside of heterosexual males.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
If anyone else saw Palin talking about energy on Glenn Beck’s TV show today, she was outstanding
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
If anyone else saw Palin talking about energy on Glenn Beck’s TV show today, she was outstanding, she exuded competence and common sense.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Then we need a reform VP - Sarah Palin.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
It’s questionable if the base will turn out as it did in 2004 or even as much as in 2000.
The early signs suggest perhaps several million Republicans that voted in 2004 might stay home.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
What signs indicate that the GOP is ready to hand the keys to Barack Obama?
Elections are contests of contrasts. McCain is the only way to stop Obama. They’ll suck it up and vote for him.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Your analysis is spot on. I generally love pontificating and trying to make myself sound more intelligent than I am, but I have little more to add to this.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
If this is a change election, then two white males will go down in defeat. Leave Pawlenty in MN, he’s our last remaining firewall.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 pm
One of the big signs is the drop in voters who identify as Republicans.
So fundamentally the base is smaller.
Secondly the demographics in polls all year have shown decreased likelihood of voting among Republicans.
Kerry showed in 2004, that you don’t win based on your base hating your opponent. Obama is disliked less among Republicans now, than Bush was disliked in 2004 among Democrats.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
It was really speaking with Hillary supporters that convinced me that it was time to play identity politics. Every female Hillary supporter that I spoke to that was considering voting for McCain said that they’d be even more likely if he stuck a woman on the ticket.
We need a woman. Shut the hell up about “principle” and “affirmative action” and let’s pick a good candidate that helps us win.
If we need a woman, I want Palin more than anyone else out there.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
#9 — The base will still turn out, though, I believe, in the end. However, all of those points just bolster my main point, which is that McCain has to appeal to these disaffected voters that are yearning for reform.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:54 pm
But Kerry didn’t appeal to the middle of the road. Kerry’s base still came out in droves- it was the independents that cost him the election. The base will still- and always will- come out. The key is winning the middle ground.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Robbie, Kerry won 54% of moderates in 2004. Kerry won 49% of Independents (that was more than Bush did). Appears to me, he appealed to the middle.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
We’ll see Alex. Let me just say I doubt your hunch. I’d be shocked if we had Republican turnout as high as in 2004.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
And Metro wins the award for best comment ever on the site.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
13 — But he appealed to the middle only because the middle didn’t like Bush.
The turn-out-the-base-screw-the-middle/51% strategy is very dangerous and should never be attempted again.
We don’t even need high base turnout, though I suspect that, due to Obama, we’ll get it. We just need a winning message of reform.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Outstanding article, Alex.
To Doug’s point, I agree that the Republican universe is simply smaller than it was in 2004, meaning that even if McCain wins 90 percent of Republicans, that’s still fewer raw votes than Bush got from Republicans in 2004.
That’s why it’s the Kerry voters who don’t want to vote for Obama who will decide this election. Most just finished voting for Hillary in the primaries. Not all of these folks are women. There are working class men in this group, and there are Hispanics and Catholics and Jews and others. But middle class and working class white women are a huge portion of this group, and they’re arguably the ones that are most persuadable right now.
Sarah Palin agrees with the base on all of the big issues, and in fact gets gold stars from the base on those issues, all while generating a gray collar soccer mom vibe. That’s a big deal, considering that the Hillary voters who are most angry right now are people like my fifty-something aunt, who has lived her whole life in the Rust Belt, who never went to college, who works for the municipal government, who doesn’t care less about movement conservatism or movement liberalism, and who just wants someone smart and competent who can keep the economy going and make sure that the trains run on time. Her most recent words on the subject: “If Hillary drops out, I don’t know what I’ll do!” McCain needs a running mate who can convince non-ideological folks in the center to vote Republican this year.
Incidentally, I’m also warming to Metro’s suggestion of Meg Whitman, who also checks the requisite base boxes, who’s also a middle-aged woman, and who also exudes intellect and competence, particularly on the economy.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Those are CNN’s exits. CNN, Gallup, and WaPo all had erroneous exits that had Kerry winning the popular vote and/or winning Ohio or Florida. The exit polling was, for the most part, wrong on all fronts. Tracking polls and internals had Bush leading by 6 among independents as late as the weekend before the election. However, tracking polls can be pretty inaccurate too. So I guess it could go either way.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Older voters show up at the polls. That is why the Republicans usually have a bump at election day.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:14 pm
17 - Oh, I knew you’d like this one. Clarence is probably going to have my head, though. (My grandma said those words verbatim, by the way: “If Hillary drops out, I don’t know what I’ll do!”)
I started warming to Meg Whitman today, too, but I think Palin checks more of the boxes, and I’m really not sure how much we want to be affiliated with big business this time around. Meg Whitman doesn’t come with astronomically high approval ratings, either…
18 - Good reminder. The exit polls were bunk in 2004.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
What makes you think a “message of reform” would be enough?
I’m not expecting a silver bullet in this sort of year. Voters want to vote Democrat. McCain will run a message of reform but he faces a tightrope walk between repudiating Bush and affirming him.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Big scoop on US News and World report on McCain VP selection process.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/06/02/mccains-timetable-for-choosing-a-running-mate.html
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Not merely a message of reform.
McCain needs a message of reform, competence, results, seriousness, experience — the whole she-bang, with a bullet-point agenda that says “I’m here to solve America’s problems. I’m more than just Not The Other Guy. I’m here to take on the challenges of the day.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Carly Fiorina could be a good one as well.
Whenever my aunt or my mom talk about Hillary, they reference how “smart” she is. Women don’t want an AA pick. They want a woman who deserves to be on the ticket. Palin, Whitman, Fiorina — they all fit the bill.
Women see Barack Obama replacing the Ultimate Glass Ceiling that Hillary had cracked. Folks like my grandmother know that this may be their last chance to ever see a woman ascend to the highest office on the planet. Obama has denied them their moment. McCain can help give it back to them by choosing a skilled and accomplished female veep who also jives with the base on all the big issues.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
24 - Right again.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
If McCain puts out a bevy of Club for Growth bullet point agendas he’ll be painted in the media as Bush’s third term or as “just a Republican”.
Ideologically McCain has a tightrope walk between the economic conservatives and the moderate and Democratic voters he wants to win over.
The economy is the main issues right now ahead of Iraq or the War on Terror.
Many economic conservatives will throw hissy fits when McCain uses rhetoric that appeals to the middle. We’ve seen it on here before. Perhaps they’ll vote for him anyway.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I like Carly (I love tough businesswomen), but I don’t think she can overcome both her history at lucent and hp. Too many bitter feelings and the HP-Compaq merger almost went down into defeat, which goes against her persuasion skills. Believe me, all that will be rehashed this fall is she’s picked. At least with Meg, you’re going to be someone who’s almost universally lauded.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
*to get
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I’m about as radical as you can get on economics, you know.
I don’t want him to put out a “Club for Growth bullet point agenda” and while I throw hissy fits when he tries to appeal to the middle, I calm down and realize that not having him say it won’t make his beliefs go away.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
So I take it you’re voting this year against Obama and for the war?
Anything else about McCain that appeals to the young libertarian crowd?
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Er, don’t get things confused — most young libertarians oppose the war against jihadism.
Most of the hardcore young libertarians went off with the Ron Paul cult and haven’t been heard from since. Something about preparing for the impending apocalypse or something…
Don’t worry yourself about the young libertarians, Doug; they aren’t deciding this election!
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Alex, I don’t think young libertarians have decided any election. I’m just curious what else appeals to you about McCain?
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Not much, really. Keeping the tax cuts permanent. Judges. He won’t use the presidency to go on so-con crusades. I agree with McCain on immigration.
But yeah, it’s mainly the war and beating Obama. Which ain’t small issues.
But remember, I was among those that threw a tantrum and threatened to quit after McCain won. So don’t think I’m a McCainiac. I don’t like McCain. But elections are contests of contrasts, and I really, really, REALLY don’t like Obama.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I’m not sure how the issue of judges plays positively with a social liberal.
As far as keeping the tax cuts permanent. Unless we have 45 Senate seats than that will be impossible. The Congress will simply do nothing and most of the tax cuts will expire without McCain even getting a chance to use a veto.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 am
I’m a social libertarian.
Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with court rulings outside of Roe v. Wade, but there are other judicial issues that are important to me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
I’m not a social liberal, but a cultural liberal (secular/intellectual/elitist).
I’m a fanatical right-winger on gun-related issues and want affirmative action abolished, though, for example.
I just want to let people do what they want, so long as they aren’t imposing force on others — is that so much to ask, eh?
Not sure where this idea came from that just because dislike something, it follows that we should ban it.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 am
Who moved this up? Fine by me. Hell, keep bumping it until November for all I care.
EDIT: Now it seems that it’s not anymore. Or that others were moved up. Weird.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 am
This post will undoubtedly elicit groans and worse from the traditional conservative element of the Republican Party but oh well:
McCain needs to run and govern like Schwartzenegger does out here, if he is going to really be successful at winning the disaffected democratic vote plus all of those true independents. The fact is many events have conspired to make this an incredibly bad cycle for the Republicans to begin with (you can guess at the factors) and worse for McCain, most of those factors are beyond anyone’s control The most important one is the economy and none of the evidence available now indicates improvement before next year. The risks are to the downside. Each tick downward in the economy will sap at McCain’s support rightly or wrongly. There is a very strong correlation.
So McCain has to thread the needle so to speak and address those economic issues in a frank manner. Not gas tax gimmickry, but substantive policy. Ditto for energy policy, environmental and infrastructure issues. Social issues will not win this election for him, nor will foreign policy. He’s got a start on the Greenhouse gas issue. He’s got to allay the centrist and left leaners he isnt going to radically upset social policy but make it clear to the right he isnt going to jump off the left side of the diving board either… Basically keep the social status quo and fix the structural issues with the economy.
I know this wont sit well with conservatives…but things have radically changed in the electorate. Ahnuuld got that concept. This state is further along in the marginalization of true conservatism but is still open to that certain type of republican. For several election cycles the CA Republican tried to out do themselves putting up the most conservative Republican nominees and promptly sat around watching those nominees go down to overwhelming defeat. It was only during a “change” election with a very underwhelming democratic candidate with huge baggage did the republicans find success, and with an economic focus at that.
McCain stands alone in possessing this potential.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:13 am
PeaJay,
Have you, perhaps, looked at that SurveyUSA poll from a few days ago that showed the Governator with a 37% approval rating and a 60% disapproval rating? He needs to govern like Schwartzenegger indeed.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 am
PeaJay,
I’m confused. If a political party only stands for…..election, what IS the purpose of a political party? Why have one? The do recycle money if that is a value. They do help unemployment by keeping unemployables employed. But where are things like values? There is no such thing as leadership when you are trying to follow multiple voting blocs who are scattered in some sort of political diaspora. America looks like loose iron filings without a magnet. And California is arguable the loosest arrangement around.In many respects, the Dems and the GOP are almost extinct……like Whigs and Federalists. If there is a party waiting to take their place, Ahnuld isn’t the leader. Someone, I don’t know who, is…..a guy who can define problems, identify solutions, clearly articulate the solutions, rally the folks, and hang those solutions on a framework that will be the new political paradigm. That’s not McCain, not Obama and certainly not Ahnuld.
We’ll see.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 am
I finally read this article. I was too tired last night. You said that I would hate the article and that certain conservatives would say in the comments that real conservatives always win and that center-right Republicans don’t perform well. I know you would like to believe that since your own conservative credentials are greatly lacking, but the evidence doesn’t compute, especially in Presidential races. The only time a real conservative has been nominated in the last 40 years was Ronald Reagan, and he did very well. The three Republicans to lose in the last 40 years (Ford, Bush, Dole) were all center-right.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
Clarence, you’ve spouted this propaganda and I’ve debunked it several times, but we can review:
1. Gerald Ford performed extremely well, given the circumstances, and is widely believed to be someone that would have won if he’d had a few more weeks. Post-pardon, post-Watergate, and for a guy that was selected, not elected, in truest sense of the term, he did damn well.
2. Bush lost after 12 years of Republican rule. He also lied about his tax pledge. It’s one thing to hold a position that’s disliked. It’s another to lie about it. He also had a very tricky three-way race.
3. Dole was a crap candidate running against the toughest kind of Democrat to beat — the popular Southern centrist. Suffice it to say, a Reagan Republican would have lost, too.
4. Reagan won after Carter fatigue, with a moderate/center-right vice-president (!), in a year that they could ‘get away’ with a conservative hardliner. In the same vein, liberals may “get away” with an Obama this year, even though it would be a symptom of Bush fatigue, not a liberal renaissance.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
[...] called for this path months ago. So what’s a winning strategy? Well, it’s not to beef up the ticket [...]