Panic seized many Democrats last week, as polls showed that the
choice of Sarah Palin as running mate had not only energized
Republicans but given John McCain a solid boost among independent voters.
Why the panic? After all, the latest poll trend could easily be
dismissed as merely the typical post-convention “bounce” for the
GOP. On Aug. 28, the final day of the Democratic convention in
Denver, the Gallup daily tracking poll reported Barack Obama
ahead by a whopping 8 points without generating any panic by
Republicans. Why should Democrats freak out over a McCain bounce that peaked at 5 points Sept. 8-9?
Yet there they were, top Democratic sources — some named, some
anonymous — confessing to reporters previously unspoken doubts
about the strategic soundness of the Obama campaign.
“There is a growing sense of doom among Democrats I have spoken
to,” one Democratic fundraiser told Andrew Ward of the Financial
Times. “People are going crazy, telling the campaign ‘you’ve
got to do something.’”
Former Clinton administration chief of staff Leon Panetta told the New York Observer
the Obama campaign was “totally reactive now” and seemed
“intimidated by the Palin pick.”
“The campaign has been knocked off stride,” a Democratic
operative told the Los Angeles Times, while the
shifting poll numbers caused Obama backer Rep. Elijah Cummings of
Maryland to say, “Whenever you see that kind of movement, you ought
to be concerned; you ought to try to address it.”
WHEN OBAMA started slamming Palin, however, two anonymous
Democratic strategists told Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press that
this task should be assigned to Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe
Biden. But Biden, meanwhile, was busy telling a New Hampshire audience that “quite
frankly [Hillary Clinton] might have been a better pick than
me.”
Granted, a 13-point poll swing in the space of 11 days would
rattle any campaign, but the panic induced among Democrats was in
part due to the extraordinary expectations raised by the Obama
campaign, and the surprise of McCain’s choice of Palin.
Democrats had been encouraged to believe that Obama would prove
so overwhelmingly popular that he could compete even in deep-red
Republican states.
Three months ago, Obama strategist David Plouffe wowed the
Washington press corps with a presentation naming as “battlegrounds” such states as
Georgia, North Carolina and Montana — even Alaska! — that
President Bush had carried by double-digit margins.
These prospects were only imaginable in the event of a massive
Democratic landslide, which Team Obama strongly urged Democrats to
imagine. Yet the latest polls indicate nothing of the kind —
McCain leads by double-digit margins in Montana
(+11), Georgia (+13) and North Carolina (+17). Polls also show McCain
holding steady leads in such swing states as
Missouri and
Florida, while holding close in Democatic blue states like
Pennsylvania and Michigan. (And, for obvious reasons, Alaska is off the table.)
Instead of the landslide that Plouffe seemed to promise, what
Democrats now face is another hard-fought battle for a relative
handful of swing states, and recent experience doesn’t give them
confidence that they can win that kind of fight — especially with
Ohio now trending Republican.
THIS EROSION of Democratic confidence was clearly accelerated by
McCain’s choice of Palin as his running mate. It pushed Democrats
into panic mode for several reasons, including their consciousness
of hurt feelings within their own ranks over Obama’s snubbing
Hillary Clinton as his running mate. (Hillary seems less than eager
to help Obama push back against the Palin phenomenon.)
Perhaps the most obvious cause of the Palin-induced panic was
that Team Obama was so clearly caught by surprise. Obama’s website
had featured a page called “The Next Cheney,” highlighting
opposition research on nine potential GOP running mates — and the
Alaska governor didn’t even make the list. (The page has since been
updated to feature anti-Palin material.) In fact, the New York
Times reported, the Obama campaign had been preparing
ads to run against Mitt Romney, but had no response ready for the
Palin pick.
Their failure to anticipate McCain’s choice of Palin undermined
Team Obama’s carefully cultivated reputation
for strategic genius. And the subsequent poll surge undermined
another source of Democratic confidence: A belief that the
unpopularity of Republicans would provide an automatic advantage to
whoever won the Democratic nomination.
Nate
Silver, the statistics buff and Obama supporter whose poll
analyses and projections have made him a media favorite, looked at
the post-Palin polls and mused that “perhaps the partisan composition of
the electorate had never shifted as much from 2004 as it has
appeared to.”
If that shift was never as large as earlier polls suggested, and
if the Palin effect continues to energize Republicans and win over
independents, then the Democratic panic may have only just
begun.
Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent)
of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the
Democratic Party. He blogs at The Other
McCain.
