The American Spectator

Political Hay

(Page 2 of 2)

As Hillary Clinton's supporters repeatedly pointed out, Obama earned his delegate margin in caucus states -- which emphasize the grassroots organizing that is his campaign's specialty -- and among black voters in Southern states that will almost certainly end up in the Republican column on Nov. 4.

Moreover, Obama didn't win any of the big "swing" states of the past two elections -- notably Florida and Ohio -- and he didn't even contest traditionally Democratic states like Kentucky and West Virginia won by Bush in 2004.

Plouffe's optimistic presentation had an air of plausibility because it came on the heels of two recent polls, by Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, showing Obama with double-digit leads.

Those polls, however, were anomalous outliers published during a week when the Gallup daily tracking poll consistently showed the race tied, or nearly so. And Democrats nearly always do better in summer polls than they do on Election Day. As Paul West of the Chicago Tribune noted, as late as July 1988, Mike Dukakis had a 17-point lead over George H.W. Bush.

Even as Plouffe made his confident predictions and Obama announced his foreign itinerary, signs of potential problems for the Democrat kept cropping up. Despite Friday's pageant of togetherness in Unity, New Hampshire, resentment still simmers between the Obama and Clinton camps, with Bill Clinton reportedly declaring that Obama will have to "kiss my ass" if he wants the ex-president's support.

AS EVIDENCE THAT Team Obama has taken its eye off the ball, consider the "Unite for Change" house parties that campaign volunteers hosted Saturday, intended to highlight the "unity" theme of Friday's Obama-Clinton show in New Hampshire.

A Democrat who hosted a "Pie and Coffee Social" in central Pennsylvania told me that there was "very short notice … like three days," from the national campaign about the events.

The woman who'd led the local Clinton effort during the primaries was out of town on vacation, the Pennsylvanian said, and with so little time to send out invitations, he'd gotten only four RSVPs by Friday evening.

Meanwhile in Missouri, it was reported that the McCain campaign was airing three times as many ads as Obama, buttressing the Republican's 7-point lead in that state.

The liberal Talking Points Memo blog noted "readers from a number of other swing states reported seeing the same thing -- a flood of McCain ads and only a much smaller number of Obama ads." This is rather surprising, given the Democrat's supposedly insuperable financial edge.

Other evidence contradicting the rosy scenario painted by Plouffe includes one poll last month showing Obama ahead by a slender three points in deep-blue Connecticut, whose ex-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman is now actively campaigning for McCain.

While the Democrat does have bright prospects in several previously Republican states, it's hard to see how Obama's handlers expect to capitalize on those chances by sending their candidate abroad to "burnish his foreign policy credentials."

During his Power Point presentation, Plouffe pointed with pride to the "enthusiasm gap" Obama enjoys over his Republican rival. As anemic as the McCain campaign may seem, the decision to send the Democratic nominee for a summer sojourn overseas indicates excessive enthusiasm at Obama HQ.

With just 125 days remaining until Nov. 4, if Obama wants to see the sights in London and Paris, expect Republicans to fondly bid him bon voyage.

topics:
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Alaska