The Dems took back Congress in 2006; Bush is an unpopular President fighting an unpopular war; the Rep party has spent like drunken sailors; people are concerned about the economy and generally take that out on the party in charge; the Rep nominee has alienated huge swaths of his base while the Dem nominee causes swooning in his audience. Because of all these things (and more), the Democrats have been licking their chops for years, anticipating a landslide victory in 2008 and putting them back into power in such a huge majority that they can do anything they want. Add to these things the fact that the MSM is fully in the tank for Obama and has been giving him a media pass for his entire campaign, and you really do have the makings of a landslide victory. But...
Here's the reality that poops in their punch bowl. The Dems misread the reason for their victory in 2006 - instead of Americans giving them a mandate, there was simply a vast amount of disgust for the GOP; they won be default, not because they had a groundswell of support. While Bush is unpopular, the Dem-led Congress is far more so, achieving single digit approval for the first time ever. The war in Iraq is essentially won, and Americans fundamentally hate losers, which the Dems have been all along on this war. The Rep nominee can steal a LOT of votes from the Dem nominee by virtue of the very things that have alienated his own base. The Dem nominee no longer walks on water. There is a new media out there that can reach a LOT of grass-roots people, and this new media is very, very effective.
So, the 2008 election is very much in play, as indicated by the polls coming out now. Obama should be trouncing McCain, but they're dead even in some polls. The question is: why? Dick Morris and Eileen McGann write a great column explaining this phenomenon. Check it out:
After almost six weeks of a constant Obama lead, generally in the five to seven-point range, Scott Rasmussen's daily tracking poll records two consecutive days of a tie race (July 12-13) and a one-point Obama lead on July 14. What happened to the Democrat's lead?
Part of the slippage is Obama's fault and part is McCain's gain.
Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights. In the space of a month and a half, this candidate — who we don't really yet know very well — reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least nine key issues:
After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn't mean it.
From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers — but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
After specifically saying in the primaries that he disagreed with Sen. Hillary Clinton's proposal to impose Social Security taxes on income over $200,000 and wanted to tax all income, he has now adopted the Clinton position.
Obama's breathtaking flips and flops are materially different from McCain's. While McCain had opposed offshore oil drilling and now supports it, the facts have obviously changed. Obama's shifts have nothing to do with altered circumstances, just a change in the political calendar.
As a candidate who was nominated to be a different kind of politician, Obama has set the bar pretty high. And, with his flipping and flopping, he is falling short, to the disillusionment of his more naïve supporters. One wag even called him the "black Bill Clinton," a turnaround of the "first black president" moniker that had been pinned on Bill.
Meanwhile, McCain and the Republicans have finally found an issue, oil drilling, exposing how the Democrats oppose drilling virtually anywhere that there might be recoverable oil. Not in Alaska. Not offshore. Not in shale deposits in the West.
The Democratic claim that we "cannot drill our way out of the crisis in gas prices" begs the question of whether, had we drilled five years ago, we would be a lot less dependent on foreign market fluctuations.
The truth is that the Democrats put the need to mitigate climate change ahead of the imperative of holding down gasoline prices at the pump. If there was ever a fault line between elitist and populist approaches to a problem, this is it. In fact, liberals basically don't see much wrong with $5 gas. Many have been urging a tax to achieve precisely this level, just like Europe has done for decades.
Obama said that he was unhappy that there was not a period of "gradual adjustment" to the high prices, but seems to shed few tears over the current levels. After all, if your imperative is climate change, a high gas price is worth 10 times a ratified Kyoto treaty in bringing about change.
Republicans can drive a truck through the gap between this elite opinion and the need for ordinary people to afford the journey to work in the morning. And, with a 16-state media buy, the Republican Party and the McCain campaign are doing precisely that.
If Obama softens his aversion to drilling, it may be the final straw for some of his liberal supporters. Where would they go?
Nader is still a possibility. But McCain can attract liberal votes. He doesn't need to bleed Obama only from the right. His own stands against drilling in Alaska and torture of terror suspects and for immigration reform make him suspect on the right, but quite acceptable to the left. If moderate liberals are disgusted by Obama's obvious attempts at chicanery and repositioning, they might just cross the aisle.
These are very important things to consider. Sadly, many Americans don't really know that much about what each candidate actually proposes and supports. This means their vote is decided largely on their impression of the candidates. Barack Obama has made John Kerry look like Old Faithful over the recent weeks, and even the MSM has reluctantly pointed it out every now and then. Regardless of their party, Americans don't like a flip-flopper, and they don't trust a liar. While most people are not particularly interested in politics, they're not stupid, and they can sniff duplicity and expediency a mile away. While this may not bother some, it will bother a lot more. This is a large part of the reason that Obama's halo isn't shining quite as brightly anymore.
McCain has switched positions on a couple issues, too, but he can reasonably point to a changing reality as his justification for changing, and very few will hold that against him. In fact, this will probably help him in the eyes of many - when the facts change, he can adapt. That's a good thing for a leader, right? Anyway, if this trend continues, McCain could end up taking the election handily.
Still, there's a lot of time left before the election, and it doesn't take long for a candidate's fortunes to change dramatically. But, these are things that deserve some attention and thought.
There's my two cents.
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