Obama's weeklong counterbounce has stalled. The race remains open with the status quo favoring Obama. Polls show Obama with a varying advantage depending on the sampling ratio of Repubs to Dems. Prediction markets gives Obama a slight edge in likelihood of being elected, currently 52.4% to 47%.
We are left with the prevailing fundamentals in a tight race which seem to favor Obama. The media consensus seems to be that McCain/Palin went nuclear with tactics and truth to achieve their bounce. This narrative provides a sustainable election advantage for Obama as the media sorts out the nonsense and labels it as such. In the meantime, Obama's tendency to speak in long sentences has served him well in that this style avoids the gotcha soundbites that have plagued McCain. Although racism is an unfortunate systemic negative for Obama, it's not something that the media will propagate: that is, media stories about racism don't encourage more racism.
Given that the democrats hold an 11% registered-voter advantage (42% of all registered voters are dems versus 31% for the repubs) it's confusing to note that so many repubs have questioned McCain's suitability for the job while almost no democrats have challenged Obama. Confusing in the sense of: why is the election so close then? Perhaps the racism thing. Who knows.
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A prototype example of the kind of McCain campaign nonsense that provides long-term negatives is the most recent defense of Palin's foreign policy experience.
A McCain aide said her experience is metaphorical in the sense that people from Miami understand the Latino culture.
I'm not sure I agree with this notion of metaphor or if the analogy from Miami to Alaska works. Either way, it plays badly politically.
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