Potential Game Changers
Over at Swampland, Joe Klein ponders several scenarios under which the dynamics of the election might swing back in McCain's favor:
As for #1, I don't think McCain has either the time or the capacity to make this election about some new pet issue (like immigration) this late in the game. As we get closer to the election, it becomes increasingly hard to steer the media discussion. The race has a momentum of its own at this point and you can't just suddenly make it about some new issue that you haven't been talking about before. Plus, McCain has boxed himself in on the immigration issue. He's even been running Spanish language ads criticizing Obama for getting in the way of comprehensive immigration reform. If he starts running hard right on immigration, he'll look like an opportunist and hypocrite of the first order and he'll alienate millions of hispanic voters that he's counting on in places like Florida.
As for #3, I find it unlikely that McCain will derive any significant advantage from the remaining debates, which are likely to focus heavily on economic issues. He gave a good performance (better than I've ever seen him give) in the first debate and it didn't help him.
As for #4 and #5, anything's possible, but it would take a fairly major Obama slip up or a major world event to significantly change the dynamics of the race, and there's only a month left in the campaign. The odds greatly favor the month passing without either happening (I do, however, agree with Joe that there is a decent chance of Reverend Wright making a cameo, a possibility I discussed earlier in the week).
But back to #2. Given that Bin Laden released a video just before the 2004 election, it's certainly possible (likely even?) that he will try to influence this election as well. And the most obvious way to do so would be to "endorse" Obama. There's no question that if that happens, every Republican will immediately hyperventilate and scream from the rooftops that Osama wants Obama to win. The question is whether voters are intelligent enough to see such a move for what it is--i.e. an attempt by Bin Laden to hurt Obama, not help him. I'd hope that at least a majority of people would be smart enough to see that. But then again, they weren't in 2004, so who knows. If I were running the Obama campaign, I'd have a detailed game plan in place to deal with this contingency.
1. McCain finds a gut-bucket issue that works--my personal suspicion is that it will be immigration demagoguery, even though he wrote the comprehensive bill. Obama's position in favor of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is an area of legitimate disagreement between the candidates and an obvious target.Of all these scenarios, the only one that really concerns me is #2. I actually mentioned that exact fear to a friend of mine yesterday. But before I get to that, let me explain why the other possibilities don't really concern me.
2.Osama Bin Laden weighs in: He did it last time, releasing a tape hammering Bush on the last weekend of the campaign. The CIA assessment was that bin Laden wanted Bush--whose policies had brought many new recruits--reelected. This time, you could see Osama "endorsing" Obama...
3. McCain does better in the next two debates--one of them is a town meeting, his favorite format. Another possible opportunity for McCain is that the first debate was watched by a mere 50 million, probably because it was held on Friday night. The town hall debate audience will be much larger, I suspect, giving McCain a second chance to make first impressions.
4. Obama screws up somehow--yeah, yeah, highly unlikely. But not impossible. After all, he did make the "cling to religion and guns" comment. More likely, will be a revisitation of a past screwup--Jeremiah Wright inserts his humble presence into the campaign. Some youthful political indiscretion is unearthed.
5. The economic issue recedes and national security comes to the fore. Iraq blows up again (the Shi'ites diss the Sunni Awakening), Pakistan disintegrates and the disposition of the nukes is unclear--and then there's always the not-so-unthinkable...another terrorist strike. (Although given McCain's erratic behavior in the past month, I'm not so sure this would be an advantage for him.)
As for #1, I don't think McCain has either the time or the capacity to make this election about some new pet issue (like immigration) this late in the game. As we get closer to the election, it becomes increasingly hard to steer the media discussion. The race has a momentum of its own at this point and you can't just suddenly make it about some new issue that you haven't been talking about before. Plus, McCain has boxed himself in on the immigration issue. He's even been running Spanish language ads criticizing Obama for getting in the way of comprehensive immigration reform. If he starts running hard right on immigration, he'll look like an opportunist and hypocrite of the first order and he'll alienate millions of hispanic voters that he's counting on in places like Florida.
As for #3, I find it unlikely that McCain will derive any significant advantage from the remaining debates, which are likely to focus heavily on economic issues. He gave a good performance (better than I've ever seen him give) in the first debate and it didn't help him.
As for #4 and #5, anything's possible, but it would take a fairly major Obama slip up or a major world event to significantly change the dynamics of the race, and there's only a month left in the campaign. The odds greatly favor the month passing without either happening (I do, however, agree with Joe that there is a decent chance of Reverend Wright making a cameo, a possibility I discussed earlier in the week).
But back to #2. Given that Bin Laden released a video just before the 2004 election, it's certainly possible (likely even?) that he will try to influence this election as well. And the most obvious way to do so would be to "endorse" Obama. There's no question that if that happens, every Republican will immediately hyperventilate and scream from the rooftops that Osama wants Obama to win. The question is whether voters are intelligent enough to see such a move for what it is--i.e. an attempt by Bin Laden to hurt Obama, not help him. I'd hope that at least a majority of people would be smart enough to see that. But then again, they weren't in 2004, so who knows. If I were running the Obama campaign, I'd have a detailed game plan in place to deal with this contingency.
posted by A.L. at 3:27 PM
12 Comments:
Bin Laden is dead. If a tape shows up, it will be a forgery. Not that that would blunt its effectiveness...
Brilliant post, AL. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Isn't the response to a Bin Laden tape that he's only alive because Bush and McCain were so focused on planning for an Iraq invasion that they allowed him to escape? There was just new information on that in the news today. Obama was effective in the debate in saying we'd taken our eye off the real front line in the war on terror and can only fix that by moving forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. Maybe Bin Laden popping up four years ago still had some fear factor, but today it just reflects bad on Bush and McCain, points out their failure. And Obama says "and that's another reason we need a change ... to get back to focusing on the real enemy instead of chasing neocon dreams in the Middle East."
If the #2 scenario plays out, all Barack would have to do is release the following statement:
"Osama bin Laden can kiss my ass"
That should do it. Hard to argue with that.
I agree with farrapo. At first glance, this seems like a dangerous scenario, especially given what happened in 2004, but if you think about it for a couple of seconds, the parry is kind of obvious. Kerry tried it last time, but didn't press the point hard enough, and anyway the political environment is quite different now. Obama could even go for some no-downside demagoguery, such as "Of course Osama bin Laden wants me elected. Under my administration, he'll definitely get his 57 virgins."
Remember that in 2004 from the day after the Dem convention ended until just after election day, we were under "Orange Alert" with a constant stream of terrorist threats being fed to us by our government. Plus the Repub's did their convention in NYC, mourning the tragic losses of 9/11. People were scared. And then just the sight of bin Laden on a tape (along with the "wolves" ad) were all it took to get people to become 9/11 Republicans, Security Moms, etc.
We are all SO over that now. We know we were conned and we're REALLY pissed off about it. We'll see it for the political stunt that it is and it will confirm for many of us that the Republicans and bin Laden have had a deal worked out all along.
I agree with people that Obama likely has a gameplan for such an October Surprise. Two easy ones:
* As others say, blame Bush-McCain for ignoring Afgan in favor of Iraq as being the reason OBL is still alive
* Be dismissive of OBL:
"Ask him if he still feels that way when my administration, unlike the current one, hunts him down and brings him to justice."
Tough talk plays better than being defensive of spending 100 words saying what can be slapped away in a soundbite sentence. That slap plays tough, but also brings to bear yet another failure of the Bush Adminstration.
John
After the convention in Denver, Obama lost a slightly smaller lead because both (1) the selection of Palin, and (2) wall-to-wall coverage of the Republican convention gave the McCain ticket complete dominance of the media for a solid week.
Both (1) and (2) reinforced each other, and with some aggressive Republican ads, for a while a mood of near-panic settled over the Democrats. Obama did not panic, though, and the tide had already turned in his favour before the economic meltdown gave him an even bigger surge.
McCain would need a similar confluence of events - not just a single event, but maybe a couple happening within a week of each other. A new attack by bin Laden, plus a kerfuffle at home?
Its hard to see where the spark would come from for McCain. The scary thing for him is that Obama has to all intents and purposes been sailing on with the same strategy since the Iowa caucuses. At this point, there is a sense of unstoppable momentum about his campaign, plus the confidence that comes from the fact that it has resisted all of McCain's best shots so far.
McCain may lash out with some desperate negative advertising, but who really knows what crazy John will do next?
I don't think #2 would make much of a difference at this point. McCain just conceded Michigan - if his campaign had it's act together that wouldn't have been necessary. This is a guy who has made a career of poking his constituency in the eye - Obama just has to not screw up and the election is his.
This election is about fear of bankruptcy, not fear of terrorists. It's about fear of economic Armageddon, not religious Armageddon. It's about middle class interests, not right wing evangelical interests. It's about Americans realizing that by giving everything to the rich all that trickled down were pink slips and foreclosure notices. It's about returning to fundamental fairness and setting policies that trickle up instead.
The ironic thing is that McCain could have maybe been one of the few Republicans who could have done well with the latino vote if he had stayed consistent with his original immigration reform stances, but he threw all the credibility out the window during the primaries when he was trying to appeal to the red meat base. Now all the immigration reform groups are running nonstop ads against him because of it; America's Voice being one example (americasvoiceonline.org) (disclosure, I've done some work with that group)
Within the political climate that we live in, the idea of an 'October Surprise' is definitely a viable plot device. But I wonder, with the GOP so discredited on so many issues, if having a 'terrorist' event wouldn't underscore yet another area where current policies have failed with the net result being that we are no more secure-maybe even less secure-than in 2001.
And John McCain, despite his mighty attempts to deny it, is perceived as part of this failed GOP.
The Silent Majority of the Nixon days is still out there, and it is living in a state of high anxiety. All of the promises and paradigms that have defined American life have been corrupted or abandoned, leaving too many people terrified and at risk with feelings of reeling toward the edge of the abyss with no protection whatsoever.
No matter what folks are telling their neighbors and friends (and pollsters), in the privacy of the voting booth many they will vote for the hope-desperate or optimistic-that things can change.
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