Howard Wolfson, who was Communications Director for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign and knows a thing or two about what works and doesn’t work against Barack Obama, argues quite convincingly that the McCain/Palin team’s concentration on Obama’s past associations won’t be enough to change the dynamic of the race.
An election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters.
State polls are beginning to reflect this. If the election were tomorrow, Obama would win all of the states John Kerry carried and add Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Florida. Barack Obama is campaigning in Indiana, which last went for a Democrat in 1964 and North Carolina, which has gone for a Democrat only once in thirty-four years. At the same time John McCain has pulled out of Michigan and Sarah Palin has been forced to visit Nebraska.
This dynamic is very unlikely to change. John McCain’s goal in the first debate was to discredit Senator Obama as a credible Commander in Chief and elevate the issue of foreign policy and national security. He didn’t come close. Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the number one issue in the race, and there is little Senator McCain can do to make up his gap with Senator Obama on it. Oh, Senator McCain will try to make issues of Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright, and that might hurt Senator Obama around the margins — but it will not prevent him from winning. The economy is simply bigger than the rogues gallery that John McCain is conjuring up.
Wolfson is, I think, largely correct, mostly because we’ve seen this before.
Back in 1992, the Bush/Quayle campaign and it’s conservative media allies, tired the same tactics with Bill Clinton while the Clinton/Gore campaign remained focused on the economy. We know who won that election. I’m fairly certain that the same thing will happen this time around.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am
[...] going negative on Obama in the middle of an economic crisis isn’t going to save them (see here, here, and here), despite clear evidence that their rhetoric is appealing to people’s worst [...]