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Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Polls showing John McCain tied or even ahead of Barack Obama are stirring angst and second-guessing among some of the Democratic Party's most experienced operatives, who worry that Obama squandered opportunities over the summer and may still be underestimating his challenges this fall.
'It's more than an increased anxiety,' said Doug Schoen, who worked as one of Bill Clinton's lead pollsters during his 1996 reelection and has worked for both Democrats and independents in recent years. 'It's a palpable frustration. Deep-seated unease in the sense that the message has gotten away from them.'
Joe Trippi, a consultant behind Howard Dean's flash-in-the-pan presidential campaign in 2004 and John Edwards' race in 2008, said the Obama campaign was slow to recognize how the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate would change the dynamic of the race.
'They were set up to run '˜experience versus change,' what they had run [against Hillary] Clinton,' Trippi said. 'And I think Palin clearly moved that to be change [and] reform, versus change. They are adjusting to that and that threw them off balance a little bit.'
A major Democratic fundraiser described it a good bit more starkly after digesting the polls of recent days: 'I'm so depressed. It's happening again. It's a nightmare.'
Adding to Democratic restlessness, McCain has largely neutralized some issue advantages that have long favored Democrats.
This week's USA Today/Gallup poll reported a split on which candidate 'can better handle the economy'; 48 percent chose Obama while 45 percent said McCain. In late August, Obama had a 16-point edge on the issue.
Also this week, an ABC News/Washington Post poll reported that when voters are asked 'who can bring about needed change to Washington,' McCain still trails Obama by 12 points. But in June, McCain trailed by 32 points.
That shift in the public's perception of the issues, in Democratic pollster Celinda Lake's words, 'tremendously concerns me.'
Lake joined other Democratic veterans, some speaking not for attribution, in emphasizing a classic liberal woe: that the Democrat let the Republican define him.
'Obama needed to define himself,' Lake said. 'I do think that during the Democratic convention we should have done a better job of defining McCain.'
Steve Rosenthal, a veteran field organizer for Democrats and organized labor, said that some entrenched Democratic vulnerabilities never receded this year. And in his view, Palin has reawakened those liberal weaknesses.
'For some white, working-class voters who don't want to vote for Barack Obama but weren't sure about McCain, Palin gave them a good reason to take another look and consider supporting McCain,' Rosenthal said.
'On the one hand, it could be a temporary reshuffling of the deck,' he added. 'And on the other hand, it underscores the deep-seated problems we have in this race with race, class and culture.
'In some ways, you play the cards you're dealt,' Rosenthal continued. 'There is a good amount of time left for Obama to make '˜the connect.''
Asked if partisans in his state are worried, New Jersey Democratic Chairman Joseph Cryan responded: 'Absolutely, absolutely. It's a '˜sit up straight and listen' kind of thing.''
While Obama's campaign is 'a little bit off-balance,' Cryan added, 'that's okay. Campaigns ebb and flow."
Like Rosenthal and Cryan, most of the Democrats interviewed for this article, both on and off the record, expressed confidence that the landscape this year tilts in favor of a Democratic victory and that Obama has plenty of time to retake command of the race. Many predicted that any bounce in polls caused by Palin's selection could be followed by a plunge as her record and qualifications continue to be scrutinized.
Still, a wide range of conversations with Democrats yielded several reasons to doubt that Obama is quite the political natural '” or the November shoo-in '” that some of his most ardent supporters believed.
Among the problems:
Obama's Summer Doldrums: After his months of exhausting trench warfare with Clinton ended in June, Obama faced a delicious opportunity '” to further define himself to the American public and hone a transcendent message in advance of the August Democratic convention.
Yes, McCain's campaign had enjoyed months of free kicks at the Democrats after the GOP primary race ended and the Obama-Clinton steel cage match continued. But most of those months were spent with the McCain camp in severe disarray, both on message '” Phil Gramm's 'mental recession' comes to mind '” and in campaign tactics, such the infamous green backdrop at his June 3 speech in a New Orleans suburb.
Yet the latest polls '” and the seeming ability of Palin to instantly transform this race '” would seem to indicate that voters got no overarching message from the Obama campaign other than he is a gifted, even inspirational political performer who aspires to change the country. The economic message Obama is now scrambling to hammer home was either absent or mixed in with a variety of other topics.
The thing voters likely remember most from the period is Obama's July trip to Europe '” a trip that prompted the McCain campaign's focus on the issue of elitism and celebrity and that some Obama campaign officials now privately acknowledge was a mistake.
Did the Obama team spend this period quietly building up formidable ground operations in all 50 states? Possibly '” and no one could question the fundraising prowess that makes this 50-state strategy possible. But as the campaign frantically tries to combat Hurricane Sarah with a meat-and-potatoes economic message and an effort to identify McCain and Palin with an unpopular president, it seems logical to conclude that its chance of success would be greater if that thematic strategy had begun months earlier.
There are also some doubters, by the way, about whether it is wise to be trying to expand the national playing field as broadly as Obama is seeking to '” as opposed to putting chips on a select number of undoubted swing states.
'Their 50-state strategy is insanity,' said Schoen. 'If they don't use their financial advantage where they need it most,' he said, citing states from Ohio to Nevada, 'and put every thing there and blow it out, they are at deep risk of losing.'
Forgetting the lessons of 1992: One of the certainties of American politics is that it is hard for Democrats to win presidential elections without a deep connection to Main Street values and economics. That would seem doubly true for Obama, given the unstated but undeniable barrier his race presents in certain areas of the country. And few nominees have ever had such an inviting target as the economic record of the Bush administration '” from a ballooning federal budget deficit to higher unemployment rates to a mortgage crisis that could be the most menacing fiscal threat in decades.
McCain has shown little interest in economics throughout his career, and Palin's limited budgetary experience comes in a state that relies heavily on earmarks from Washington and the largesse of Big Oil. The primary economic cure voiced by the GOP tickets is more tax cuts and an unspecific pledge to be tough on congressional earmarks. Perhaps the only economic solution given prominence at the St. Paul convention was a push to allow domestic coastal oil drilling.
Yet still, the Obama campaign seems to be struggling to find a consistent, cohesive economic message. One can understand why aides would not want to muddy his mantra of change and his image as a post-partisan, revolutionary figure. But blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Michigan likely won't vote for Obama because of some meta-narrative or a series of fabulous speeches.
'The [Obama] campaign is beginning to look like other campaigns,' said a former top strategist for past Democratic presidential campaigns, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 'Obama is struggling with working-class whites just like John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis did, and Walter Mondale. He's struggling with voters in the border-state South. And he's struggling with an enormous wind at his back, a hatred for George Bush and a mainstream media that is little short of a chorus for his campaign.'
Clinton, of course, was the only one of these Democrats to actually win the struggle. As he could tell Obama, voters want to know how their lives would be bettered by an Obama presidency in very specific terms. This connection (along with independent Ross Perot) is what powered his upset run against George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Clinton probably would have offered Obama that advice personally months ago '” but the two men were scheduled to have their first campaign-year meeting on Thursday, just over 50 days from Election Day.
The Expectations Game: Anyone who thinks the presidential election should be a layup for Obama should remember that Democrats have broken the 50 percent barrier in presidential elections only twice since 1944.
Did Obama himself forget?
Even if he didn't, he let a narrative take hold in the news media and among many of his own supporters that led to expectations that he should be far ahead, leading to disappointment when he isn't.
'A lot of Democratic elites thought this was a slam-dunk. And I thought, no it's not,' said Lake, the pollster. 'People in this town were already measuring drapes. And I was thinking, have you been in the real world lately?
'If you have been involved in campaigns, you thought it was going to be close for a year,' she added. 'And I think a lot of Democratic elites are waking up to that.'
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Now you can add democrats in Congress to the list of doubters....
Democratic jitters about the US presidential race have spread to Capitol Hill, where some members of Congress are worried that Barack Obama's faltering campaign could hurt their chances of re-election.
Party leaders have been hoping to strengthen Democratic control of the House and Senate in November, but John McCain's jump in the polls has stoked fears of a Republican resurgence.
A Democratic fundraiser for Congressional candidates said some planned to distance themselves from Mr Obama and not attack Mr McCain.
'If people are voting for McCain it could help Republicans all the way down the ticket, even in a year when the Democrats should be sweeping all before us,' said the fundraiser, a former Hillary Clinton supporter.
'There is a growing sense of doom among Democrats I have spoken to . . . People are going crazy, telling the campaign '˜you've got to do something'.'
Concern was greatest among first-term representatives who won seats in traditionally Republican districts in the landslide of 2006. 'Several of them face a real fight to hold on to those seats,' the fundraiser said.
Tony Podesta, a senior Democratic lobbyist, said members of Congress were 'a little nervous' after Mr McCain shook up the race with his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate and intensified attacks on Mr Obama.
'Republicans have been on the offensive for the past two weeks . . . You don't win elections on the defensive.'
The campaign manager for a first-term Democratic congressman from a blue-collar district in the north-east rejected suggestions that Mr Obama had become a liability. He said his candidate would reach out to Republicans and avoid attacks on Mr McCain.
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Funny how you skipped over the article that was on the front page of that same website in the OP about GOP not feeling safe about Palin's experience.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13368.html
In state after state, rally after rally, Sarah Palin is generating record levels of enthusiasm among the Republican base. Crowds chant her name, congressional candidates cite her in their ads and there are numerous reports of a surge in grass-roots volunteers for the McCain campaign.
The acclaim for the vice presidential nominee is all but deafening within the GOP, except in one small but influential corner: the party's foreign policy establishment. Among that mandarin class, the response to Palin's nomination has been underwhelming, marked by distinctly faint praise or flat-out silence.
Consider Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who currently serves as the committee's top-ranking Republican.
The day Sen. Joe Biden was announced as Barack Obama's running mate, Lugar, while en route to Tbilisi, Georgia, quickly issued a statement praising the choice.
"I congratulate Sen. Barack Obama on his selection of my friend, Sen. Joe Biden, to be his vice presidential running mate,' he said. 'I have enjoyed for many years the opportunity to work with Joe Biden to bring strong bipartisan support to United States foreign policy.'
See Also
Autumn Angst: Dems fret about Obama
The Arena: Why does the press cover the trivial?
Pre-Game: Today's strategies
To date, Lugar has been silent regarding Palin.
In a CNN interview over the weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to defend Palin's foreign policy credentials when asked whether Palin has 'enough experience to handle the kinds of things that you need to handle?'
Rice replied: 'These are decisions that Sen. McCain has made. I have great confidence in him. I'm not going to get involved in this political campaign. As secretary of state, I don't do that. But I thought her speech was wonderful.'
While none have come out and publicly questioned the Alaska governor's level of experience in foreign affairs, few have been willing to make the case that Palin is well-versed in the field.
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and conservative hawk on foreign affairs, segued from questions of Palin's inexperience to McCain's experience.
'You want your strength on national security at the top of the ticket,' Bolton told Politico at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. 'I feel very comfortable with her as a vice presidential nominee, how it plays politically beyond that, I don't know."
'As somebody who spent a good part of his professional career on foreign policy matters, I was delighted by her nomination,' he later said. 'What you have to look for is extensive executive experience.'
Last week, prior to Palin's acceptance speech, former Secretary of the Navy and former Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) chose to accentuate the positive.
He told the Richmond Times Dispatch that Palin is 'intelligent, she has a lot of tenacity, she is a risk taker and she is plenty energetic,' but he added 'only time will tell' if Palin is the smart choice for McCain.
A McCain policy adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged hearing from several worried GOP veterans immediately after Palin's selection.
'To a lot of people it was a surprise choice, so there was caution,' the adviser said early last week. 'There was a pause because they didn't know her. My own personal view is I'm feeling more and more enthusiastic and I think they will too.'
Robert Kagan, a foreign policy adviser to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.
'I don't take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world," he said. "I'm not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin's experience.'
One top conservative foreign policy wonk who declined to be named said he believed some of the questions surrounding Palin's experience are sexist.
'I don't see why Tim Pawlenty has any greater knowledge of foreign policy, and nobody would have raised a peep about him,' he said
Max Boot, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow who also advises the McCain campaign, said that upon hearing McCain had tapped Palin,'like most people, I don't think I had any impression at all."
Boot said he soon decided that 'she was a great way for McCain to generate excitement and interest in his campaign, one day after the Democratic convention.'
'I don't know what her foreign policy views are. I'm not sure how important that is,' Boot continued. 'No one thinks that a McCain administration would be guided by the foreign policy of a vice president. The office of the vice president is not set up to be a second national security adviser or secretary of state.
'The lesson of the last eight years is that we had a president who was not that well versed on foreign affairs coming into office and we had a vice president who was supposed to make up for that deficiency,' Boot added. 'It seems to me the Obama campaign is trying to establish the Bush model.'
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Not feeling safe? Palin may cause the republicans to gain seats in Congress....
Palin Popularity Trickles Down for GOP
John McCain successfully closed the gap with Barack Obama when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. But beyond the presidential contest, Republican leaders in Congress see a shifted landscape for their candidates, and for the first time in months, they have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the November elections.
"In the last three or four weeks, Democrats thought, especially after their convention, they thought things were all moving in their direction," National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Ensign told Real Clear Politics. "The momentum has totally changed, and it's on our side."
While the Republican brand remains unpopular with voters around the nation, polls have shown a generic Republican congressional candidate creeping to within striking distance of the generic Democratic candidate. That gap has closed, Republicans say, because Palin has given their party inroads with voters who would otherwise have been firmly in the Democratic camp.
"She's a pretty interesting character. I think Americans like that story, they like 'Mr. Smith Comes to Washington,'" said Tom Cole, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee. "If you're the Republicans, you need to make the public take a second look at you this cycle."
Her gender is no small part of her appeal. "Governor Palin has energized our base, not only energized our base but made a lot of women take a second look at the Republican Party," Ensign said. But gender isn't everything, he continued: "She's a reformer. That she's a woman is a bonus."
In the weeks since Palin was picked and as the Republican base has tuned in, several of Ensign's Senate GOP colleagues have shown improvement. A recent poll conducted for the NRSC showed New Hampshire Senator John Sununu trailing his Democratic opponent by just two points, after surveys have showed Sununu behind by double digits. Another poll had Colorado Democratic Rep. Mark Udall leading ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer, a Republican, by a single point, while earlier surveys showed Udall with a bigger lead. And in Palin's home state, Senator Ted Stevens even boasted his first lead of the cycle over Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich; Stevens leads by two points in another NRSC poll.
In the interview, Ensign hinted that other polls had been conducted, though he wouldn't discuss details. Palin helps his candidates, he said, especially in the Inner Mountain West, where voters' natural libertarianism would match well with Palin's philosophy. Ensign also singled out North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole, who is locked in a tough battle for re-election with Democratic State Senator Kay Hagan.
Republican House candidates, many of whom feared a depressed GOP base unenthusiastic about McCain heading the ticket, now have reason to look up. "There's no question [Palin] helps you in these sort of conservative districts," Cole said in an interview. "The Democrats like to crow about the gains in Louisiana and Mississippi. You think Barack Obama or Sarah Palin will be of the most political impact in those seats?"
Already, Alabama State Rep. Jay Love, running for retiring Republican Terry Everett's seat, has an advertisement up boasting of his support for the McCain-Palin ticket. And her popularity among Republican candidates is clear, both committee chiefs said, based on the number of phone calls they have fielded from those who want to appear with her. "Our phones ring off the walls," Cole said. "People want to be seen with her. They think this is pretty exciting." "Everybody wants Governor Palin," Ensign agreed.
Republicans say the landscape has changed in the past few weeks, reflected by the party's improved standing in generic ballot tests. Through July, Democrats led the RCP Generic Congressional Average by 12 points. Today, that lead is down to 3.6 points.
And while the playing field remains difficult, Republicans feel much better now than they did just a month ago. "We're not going to get the majority back, I think that's pretty clear," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Real Clear Politics during an interview at the GOP convention in St. Paul. "I do think we will stay roughly where we are. ... We have a good chance of still being what I would call a relevant minority."
"The presidential campaign being as close and competitive has really helped us, because frankly most of the districts we're fighting in John McCain and Governor Palin are likely to win," the NRCC's Cole said. Republicans face "not a great environment, but a better environment than we've faced any time since 2002."
Though the NRSC has just one serious opportunity to pick up a Democratic-held seat with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu facing a tough post-Hurricane Katrina re-election, the chairman said he is more confident in how his incumbents will fare, thanks at least in some part to Palin's influence. "I'm feeling a lot better about our chances this Fall," Ensign said.
If Palin's popularity continues at or near the apex it has reached, Cole and Ensign may beat expectations that they would lose perhaps more than two dozen seats between chambers, set for them months ago. And though Palin has her own race to focus on, her very presence on the ticket could do more to boost the GOP than any other move the party has made this year.
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Good thinking James. Vote for Palin as VP who's horribly unqualified because she will give the GOP seats in Congress.
How can anyone respect Palin as a candidate? She didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was! She's been outside of the country once! Never met a foreign leader. Yet she thinks she has insights into Russia BECAUSE SHE CAN SEE IT!
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Good thinking James. Vote for Palin as VP who's horribly unqualified because she will give the GOP seats in Congress.
Its politics. She is probably the most brilliant VP pick in history. Not only is she influencing the presidential election, she has the power to shape Congress and its going to force the dems to abandon Obama to save their own ass.
Surely you can see the genius in that even if you don't like her.
As far as my personal opinion goes, I would prefer a democratic congress in a McCain/Palin administration. The country gets things done in those scenarios. The 80's boom had Reagan against a democratic congress and the 90's boom had Clinton against a republican congress.
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
How can anyone respect Palin as a candidate? She didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was! She's been outside of the country once! Never met a foreign leader. !
Had she tried to answer that question without clarification I would probably agree. She has a brain and she used it.
Only been outside the country once? Dang! We need to go back in time and remove several liberal presidents from office.
Yet she thinks she has insights into Russia BECAUSE SHE CAN SEE IT
I'll admit that I laughed at that, but you're making a mountain out of a microscopic molehill. The response wasn't that bad.
Re: Even democrats now starting to doubt
Obama made one fatal mistake.
He chose Biden and not Hilary. And everyday that becomes more evident. Other than that, I don't see alot of 'mistakes', other than he sounding like a dumbass with the whole 'lets sue Bush' shit he said a couple weeks ago.
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