I’m recooperating after a little bit of election addiction. It was pretty bad for a little while, but now, with no no polls to check, I’ve been working to fill the lull. So far, it’s been filled with walks in parks (ah, air) and catching up on some needed sleep (I’ve been passing out at 9 PMish since Election Day). Unfortunately, I’m still doing the MSNBC watching, but c’mon, Rachel Maddow’s show is the best, and it’s an exciting time.
Election night was incredible, and culminated into a parade to the White House. I still can’t believe we did it - it was a nearly flawless campaign, and because I’m a democrat, I know better than to think about the possibilities of my candidate as president. I couldn’t help it at times, and I’d “go there,” but man, to have it really happen..
With my mind liberated from the nightmarish horror that was the concept of a Sarah Palin presidency, who knows what might happen.
While it’s been hard not to let out a primal scream over the last few days, I’m trying my hardest not to get worried. Well, too late. By “not worried,” I really mean “not too worried.”
I know that the McCain post-convention bounce will fade and wither away, but there are two polls from yesterday that concern me greatly:
1) Barack is losing support from white women — for now. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released yesterday finds that among white women, McCain is leading 53 to 41. The pre-convention numbers favored Barack at 50 to 42. This is a key constituency that we absolutely need to win this election. I can’t remember the time that the Democrats haven’t finished ahead in this demographic.
2) McCain is now winning a majority of Independents. Gallup has found that McCain’s support from Independents has also jumped from the low-40’s to the low-50’s. Before the convention, Obama and McCain were tied at 42% apiece. Now McCain has 52%.
Repeat the mantra with me and cross your fingers: “It’s just a convention bounce, it’s just a convention bounce.”
I’m hoping that today’s daily numbers show us doing better. And I’m also hoping that as the state polls come in, we’re still looking good on the electoral map, because that’s the one that really counts.
Andrew Sullivan points to a superb anti-McCain ad that is sincerely compelling.
It’s far and wide the best ad since the general election began. It’s extremely professionally done — great, vivid imagery with standard “washed-out” effects, great added shakiness to cameras to trigger emotions of uneasiness. It also features the best “McCain=Bush” line of comparison that I’ve heard so far — that not only has McCain voted with Bush, but that the percentage has increased almost as steadily as the public’s opinion of Bush has declined.
As I watched, I was eagerly awaiting an end with the normal “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message” jargon…but none was found. Nope, it’s not from the Obama camp, but from a normal YouTuber.
Kind of sad. I love the Internet (clearly!), but I know that there’s a limited audience when YouTube is involved. It won’t reach the people who really need to see this, which is disheartening, because it should be seen by all.
It looks like the McCain camp is solidly convinced that the “Obama = Celeb” meme seems to be working.
They’ve released their third — yes, THIRD — ad on this subject:
Yes, it’s easy to hit McCain for not being “the original maverick,” but for being “the original celebrity.” Check out his IMDB profile, for instance. Look at that, he was on “24,” and was even in The Wedding Crashers. How nice of him.
But how’s this answer? With a framing like this, we’d stay “positive,” but also go for the jugular:
“There’s nothing wrong with capturing America’s imagination. John McCain seems to be forgetting why Americans are hoping for something new. He doesn’t give Americans enough credit — he takes us for fools, and thinks we’re supporting for Obama because he’s a ‘celebrity.’ The simple truth is it’s John McCain and George Bush’s policies that are causing Americans to dream for something better. And now he has the audacity to blame us for wanting more? He’s telling us not to be dreamers. He’s telling us ‘No We Can’t.’ It’s the ultimate pessimism. That’s not the American spirit, and that’s not what we stand for.”
Clearly this stuff is riling me up, as you can see by the last three posts, all on this subject.
I’ll give you the truth — over the last few days, I’ve become slightly anxious about the presidential race. I’d say that I think the “Obama = Celebrity”/”Obama = Messiah?” attacks are troubling to me. They’re the kind of personal attacks that build a narrative that sticks. They’re emotive enough to elicit responses — it’s got powerful imagery (you can just picture it), and it’s new enough (fresh arguments tend to permeate the most due to a psychological principle called sensory adaption. It’s like when you’re in a smelly room long enough. Eventually, you just don’t smell it any more).
And what’s most troubling is that we, as Democrats, don’t realize that always use nuance and logic to argue against it. Sure, it might win the argument — maybe — but it doesn’t even matter. It’s repeated too much.
Think about situations like the Obama “keep your tires tire inflated” suggestion. Of course, it’s true..making sure your tires are inflated would save energy. McCain’s charge that it’s Obama’s entire energy plan, and his campaign’s handing out tire gauges is of course an oversimplification. But you need to explain nuance to dismiss it. Meanwhile, it’s worked to build McCain’s narrative about Obama — that he’s out of touch with everyday Americans. And while it comes from the guy who says he hasn’t pumped gas in a while and “(doesn’t) see how it matters” that he doesn’t know the price of gas (his defense was that he has Secret Service protection and it had been a while, but in reality, he had only been under protection for a mere two months before that point) somehow it’s Obama that’s “out of touch.”
It then becomes, like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, legend. And as the quote goes, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. (By the way, I did a paper, back in the day, on Swift Vets. It covers a lot of these psychological principles, and has an interview with its creator about the concept and design of the campaign, so please feel free to take a look.)
But the truth is that the Democrats were going to pair any Republican nominee with Bush. Thus, it’s just not personal enough. It’s not unique…and it’s just not as down deep into the psychology of the candidate for it to really resonate.
Most of America still seems to think that McCain’s the “maverick,” so it’d make sense to bring that down — after all, that does go with the Rovian strategy to pull the carpet from underneath a candidate by attacking their core strength — and the Obama campaign has already started to do that with this video, called “Original”:
But I think this again misses the point. There’s one key argument that remains for McCain even if you tear that down. “Okay, so he’s not the maverick he says he is,” it might go. “So, he’s a regular politician. But he’s still a politician that I can trust in these strange times.”
So, I started pondering a bit — is the “maverick” label really what has made McCain successful in this election? I’d argue no — because McCain was the maverick when he was down in the polls a year ago and was branded “washed up.” It was, actually, his gamble on the “surge” that brought him back to life. And he’s still talking about it, because he plays it up as a strength. So far, the success of the “surge” has worked as a benefit for McCain.
But I thought about it for a second. The campaign seems to be arguing that because the surge has worked, our national foreign policy over the last 7 years — which McCain actively promoted and endorsed again and again on television — has been, in his own words “worth it.”
So why not ask the American people if the surge has made the Iraq War worth it? The lives, the dangerous world we now live in — and especially the economic costs. Run an ad on the latest news that the Iraqi government will have a $79 Billion surplus and yet we’re funding the reconstruction — but yet, McCain says the war has been “worth it” for the American taxpayers. How out of touch is that?
The “surge” is the biggest empty suit that exists. And it’s the entire foundation of McCain’s campaign — all arguments about his superior judgment point towards it, in fact. Without the surge, McCain would’ve been nowhere in the Republican primary, and I wonder where he’d be without it in the general election.
