The Polling Turnout Models Are Really On The Ballot

Like many McCain supporters, I'm preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.  This race will ultimately come down to turnout.  I agree with those who argue that, if the turnout reflects an historically high spread of Democrats over Republicans, it will be a bloodbath for the GOP.  If, however, the pollsters making assumptions based upon a six, eight, or even thirteen percent turnout advantage for the Democrats are wrong, look for an exceedingly close race, a potential McCain victory, and a lot of pollsters with egg all over their faces.  Also look for Chris Matthew's face to split right down the middle on national television.  

I'll make a prediction right now.  If the turnout models prove to have been way, way off, and John McCain wins, the hard Left and its allies in the MSM will assume that the polls were accurate and the election was stolen.  The wails of agony and cries of fraud will be shrill and plentiful.  There's simply no way the Left can lose this race and accept the outcome. Not a chance.

As for the United States Senate?  The GOP is going to lose some seats, possibly as many as seven or eight.  I don't think that the Democrats will get to sixty, but they don't really need to.  Anything less than sixty makes it impossible for the Dems to control a cloture vote, but they could probably pick off just enough Republicans to do it anyway.  As a bulwark against this, I'd like to see enough endangered Republican incumbents hang on to keep the Dems at no more than fifty-five or fifty-six seats.  Every vote in the Senate that puts the Democrats a little further from sixty is critical.  

The key race for me is up in Minnesota.  Al Franken is strikingly unfit for membership in the United States Senate. It would be nothing short of a travesty for a man as mean-spirited, bitter and uncouth as Franken to defeat an honorable man like Norm Coleman.  Coleman's work on exposing the corrupt UN "Oil-for-Food" program should be enough to earn him re-election.  If Franken were to win, it would be an embarrassing indictment of the intelligence of Minnesota voters.  In such an unthinkable scenario, every voter who cast a ballot for Franken, or helped Franken by voting for the third party candidate, would get what they deserve.  I'll happily remind them of this after Franken is hauled off the Senate floor after verbally and physically assaulting one of his colleagues.

It goes without saying that the GOP is facing a tough scenario in the House.  The Dems are going to pick-up quite a few seats.  The key race I'll be watching is the effort to unseat Jack "Haditha" Murtha.  Hopefully enough of his "racist" and "redneck" constituents rise up to summarily remove him from his seat. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Debate Wrap-Up

Just a few quick thoughts on last night's debate.

This debate was by far the best showing yet for Senator McCain.  He was appropriately aggressive, and contrary to what some of the pundits have concluded, I thought he landed some pretty good punches.  Fred Barnes seemed to think, for instance, that McCain missed an opportunity on the abortion issue by neglecting to mention Senator Obama's support for the Freedom of Choice Act.  What McCain did do, though, was bring up Obama's opposition as an Illinois State Senator to the Born Alive Act as well as legislation banning partial birth abortions.  I thought that these two points were terrific.

The high-mark for Senator McCain, in my opinion, was when he boldly told Senator Obama that he (McCain) wasn't George Bush, and that if Senator Obama wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run four years ago.  It's about time that McCain challenged Obama on this point.  Conservatives like myself have long been critical of McCain because of his tendency to stray from the GOP reservation.  It's particularly galling to hear Senator Obama contend that somehow there's an equivalence between McCain and Bush.

The inadvertent (maybe) reference to Obama as "Senator Government" could potentially be a defining moment. 

Senator McCain did a fine job of drawing the critical liberal versus conservative distinction on taxes (Obama wants to spread the wealth), health care (federal mandates and fines), energy (Obama would "look at drilling") and free trade (Obama supports tariffs and more limited trade).

No one would dispute that Senator Obama is a superior debater.  Still, I believe that those watching the debate may have seen what I saw...an unsettling slippery quality usually associated with slick-talking salesmen.  McCain pointed this tendency out on a couple of occasions ("looking" at drilling and "health of the mother").  I can't guarantee that everyone viewed the debate the same way I did, but , more than on any other occasion, I thought that Senator Obama looked plainly evasive.  His propensity to bob and weave was very evident when challenged to repudiate the incendiary remarks of Congressmen John Lewis.  He talked around it prodigiously, but never issued a repudiation, even when challenged to do so a second time by Senator McCain.

I liked McCain's effort to tie Senator Obama to Acorn.  He needs to keep doing that, as the Acorn voter fraud story is so pernicious that it has broken through the MSM protective filter.

I watched the Frank Luntz focus group of "undecided" Florida voters after the debate.  While most of them thought that Obama had won the debate, one got the sense that they still weren't sold on either candidate.  In fact, the first person interviewed plainly stated that, while he thinks Obama won the debate, he wasn't going to be voting for him because he just doesn't trust him.  Some of the others who thought Obama won the debate, when asked for their thoughts on what they watched, complimented Senator McCain for making this or that point rather than talking about Senator Obama.

This reminded me of the GOP primaries.  As most of you know, I was a strong supporter of Governor Romney.  I was joined by pundits and focus group participants in my belief that Governor Romney won each of the debates.  Even so, the polls never seemed to move significantly in Romney's direction and McCain won the primary.  I think what this illustrates is the disconnect that exists between a good debate performance and how voters feel about a candidate.  Voters may award a debate victory to an articulate candidate on points, but still like the other guy better on election day.  Voting can often be more visceral than cerebral, and therein lies both the risk and the hope for McCain's candidacy.  Voters are presently feeling an anger about the economy that has them seemingly poised to vent their frustration by putting the new and untested candidate into the White House.  The ideal situation for Senator McCain is that undecided voters and independents have a deeply felt discomfort with Senator Obama that trumps their anger about the crumbling financial market.

Senator Obama is looking strong at the moment.  I think it's entirely possible, though, that undecided voters, if they choose to vote at all in large numbers, may walk into the voting booth and find that they can't pull the lever for Obama because, well, it just doesn't feel right.  There are too many questions and doubts involving Senator Obama.

The next three weeks will be critical.

Conservatives Ought Not Despair

The race seems to have shifted to the benefit of Senator Obama over the last seven to ten days.  The Real Clear Politics average of polls has Senator Obama leading Senator McCain by six points with four weeks remaining. 

Senator Obama has benefited substantially from the roiling of the financial markets caused by the mortgage lending crisis.  That Senator Obama would benefit from the crisis is patently unfair by any objective standard.  The Democrats bear a substantial share of the blame for their mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  It was also the Democrats who, in an effort to expand home ownership, aggressively pushed for loans to individuals who evidently couldn't afford them.

Still, it's not unexpected that voters instinctively, if not rationally, lay the blame for a crisis at the door of the incumbent party.  In this case, the perception among voters is that the incumbent party happens to be the one that occupies the White House.  Voters aren't rushing toward Senator Obama as much as they are recoiling from the immediate status quo.  An analogy would be the case of somebody with a foul taste in their mouth reaching for a pack of gum.  Voters badly want to cleanse their pallet of the awful taste, and they appear willing to grab for a pack of gum that they've never tried before.  

This instinctive reaction to the mortgage crisis among the electorate actually holds a germ of promise for Senator McCain.  Why?  Because of the very nature of a visceral reaction.  I don't think that those voters whom polls show have suddenly swung to Senator Obama have actually made an affirmative decision to favor Senator Obama because of his politics and personal attributes.  Not by a long shot.  These voters turned to the Democrat as a way of registering their instinctive distaste with what was happening to the markets.  Things are messed up so let's give the new guy a chance!

Of course, this is a panic mentality.  Regardless of how one views the merits of the bailout plan approved by Congress and signed into law by the President, the perception among the electorate will be that something was done about the crisis.  If the markets show signs of settling in over the next week or two, the voters who swung toward Senator Obama while in a state of panic and disgust may very well take a step back and reassess the race.  I believe this is exactly what will happen, and it presents a significant opportunity for Senator McCain.

This renewed attention to the race means that the next month is absolutely critical to the McCain campaign.  They have to aggressively work to establish a narrative about Senator Obama that highlights his inexperience and radical leftist agenda.  It appears as if the McCain campaign intends to do just that.  Governor Palin is already hitting Senator Obama on his past statements indicting American troops fighting in Afghanistan.

My prediction is that the race will tighten substantially and that the campaigns will be locked into a statistical deadheat by election day.  This election has always been a referendum on Barack Obama.  A McCain victory will be wholly dependent on just how much he can reinforce the already existing doubts in the minds of voters about just how risky and radical Senator Obama and his policies really are.  Also, in a close race, don't discount the influence of the "Bradley Effect."

The Great One is Struggling

Barack Obama is having a hard time taking advantage of what is supposed to be a Democratic year that finally reveals to us that we are the change we've been waiting for:

But the signs are that Mr McCain’s continuing attacks – most recently in a commercial that portrayed Mr Obama as a vapid celebrity against images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears – may be striking a chord with the white working class voters who shunned Mr Obama so emphatically in many of his primary contests with Hillary Clinton.

With just one month to go before Labour Day – the traditional beginning of the general election – and only three weeks before the Democratic convention, many Democrats fear that time is running out for Mr Obama to overcome the suspicions of this key swing vote.

“We have got to move away from these beautifully choreographed speeches which appeal to groups of voters who are unassailably in the Obama camp already,” said a non-staff adviser to Mr Obama. “What plays well with the educated liberal voter sometimes grates with the blue-collar folk, whom we need on our side if we are going to win.”

The numbers back up the concern. Although Mr Obama has a good shot at winning traditional Republican states such as Colorado, Virginia and even North Carolina, he cannot capture the White House if he loses more than one of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan – the more traditional, blue-collar swing states, which Mrs Clinton won by huge margins in the primary contests. Polls suggest these states are too close to call.

At this stage in the 1988 presidential race, Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate, had a 17 percentage point lead over George H.W. Bush, who went on to win the election. John Kerry emerged from the 2004 Democratic convention with a strong lead over George W. Bush only to lose the election as well. In 2008, conventional wisdom says Mr McCain is running a much less effective campaign than either of the Bushes.

It's pretty much true.  John McCain's campaign has thus far left much to be desired, but Obama can't seem to pull away.  Even the obnoxious and over-the-top media fawning doesn't seem to be helping him.  I'm starting to think that this election won't be a referendum on Barack Obama as much as it will be a referendum on the waning power of the mainstream media.