Posted on 07/25/2008 8:40:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you read, watch and hear the media describe the campaign of 2008, it appears to be the most one-sided contest since Reagan trounced Mondale in 1984. McCain always comes across as borderline senile, lethargic, and pitiful while Obama is awash in media heroics and theatrical flourishes.
But the race is still basically tied according to the polls.
While Obama has gotten a four point bounce, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, from his European trip and the adulatory response of the left-leaning German crowds, the two candidates have been within one or two points of each other for the past three weeks.
Never has the disjuncture between coverage and reality loomed quite so large as it does in this race. You get one image from the media and a totally different one from the polling.
Behind this gap between perception and reality lies the more fundamental reality: Voters are worried about Barack Obama. Recent national polls show Obama with just a 40% favorable ratio among white voters. He is clearly hitting up against some substantial sales resistance, particularly among middle aged and older white women.
Obama went to Europe as a steak seeking to recover his sizzle. The absence of weekly teleprompter victory speeches in primary contests has sapped some of the enthusiasm his candidacy generated all spring. But, for a more sustained bounce, he went abroad to hype his ratings as a potential commander-in-chief and his standing as a foreign policy expert.
But clearly Obama is a domestic policy candidate. Overall, he can only win if foreign issues do not intrude unduly in the election campaign. Any reminder of foreign concerns, the war on terror, Iraq, or Iran, serves to undermine his ability to win. Never has there been a clearer fact than that McCain is better able to handle a foreign policy crisis, just as Bush was more prepared in 1992 to do so than was Clinton. Then, as now, the Democrat could only win if foreign affairs stayed on the periphery of the campaign.
But will they? Will Iran remain on a back burner as rumors of an impending Israeli or American military strike mount? Will Iraq stay off the front pages even though more than 100,000 American troops are at risk there? Will al Qaeda remain off balance and off the front pages?
Lately, it has become fashionable for McCain backers to complain about his seeming lethargy and the weakness of his campaign. Some extrapolate into speculation about his ability to handle the job of president. But, as delighted as the media is to fan such speculation, the fact is that he’s not running a bad race. He’s basically still tied and he has Obama on the defensive on the Iraq war issue, quite an achievement in itself.
Make no mistake about it, no matter how adulatory the media coverage of Obama gets, this race is still up for grabs and Obama has been unable to put it away. Sure McCain needs to step up his attacks and must pin Obama down on his flips and his flops. But even so, give credit where it is due — it is very unusual, in this sycophantic media atmosphere, for McCain to be running even with Obama this late in the game.
Barack is good for summer entertainment ... but not for President of the USA.
He takes 8 sides of every situation. So he'll be "right" again.
Figured that out all by himself, did he?
PS: One of the upsides of this election cycle is the MSM will pick up speed as it heads over Niagra Falls.
Obama went overseas to promise the “people of the world” that he would end the divide between rich and poor nations, and said, “people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time.”
Obama is running for a hostile takeover of the US on behalf of the anti-American international community. His plan is quite plainly to rape and pillage America’s wealth, and redistribute it to the rest of the world. His speech was brazenly candid about this.
He has already put forth this very plan in the S.2433 Global Poverty Act of 2007, which he authored in the Senate.
I agree. Sure, he could improve his campaigning, but he's toughened up his rhetoric and is taking some good shots.
Obama has peaked. Watch his face; listen to his tone. He is a sourpuss who drones on uninspiringly. Sure, he'll get bounce from the convention and he's got the black vote, but he's not only worrying voters, he BORING them.
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I agree! The media is doing irrepairable damage to themselves and they are so far left that they don’t even realize it. People are just plaln getting sick of this 24/7 BO lovefest.
If they do start openly questioning their annointed messiah, he will implode and will fall apart very quickly.
Well duh! Dick Morris, the Dan Dierdoff of politics.
That’s right, and you almost get the sens he was looking to goose his illegal foreign contributions as well!
McCain's "senility" is joked about (at length) every night on Leno. One can only imagine the jokes if McCain were the one who spoke of "57 states" or of Kansas tornadoes killing a 10,000 people. But because those gaffes are Obama's, they're completely ignored.
Mad Jon has an odd style of campaigning, he doesn’t pander per se, he picks off voting blocks, his lethargy is not so much that as he is taking his time talking with people and winning some of them over, by no means all.
Mad Jon’s path to victory is the White Male Vote, older Woman, and then 40% here and 40% there and just doing a bit better then one would think he does.
I don’t think he will have coattails, but he could win with that strategy, sort of a Southern Strategy, but only nicer.
If Obama loses the general election I don’t think I’ll be able to tear myself away from the TV for a full week. Watching the media gnash their teeth over another loss will be better than the 2000 election and the 1994 republican revolution combined!
-Roscommon
If he goes left or middle of the road I think he eats it.
If he picks a strong conservative (who might that be??? - John Bolton would be something...) conservatives will be better able to stomach voting for him.
I look forward to the calls of voter tampering and recounts in 9 states and the like.
I think my blood pressure doubled on that one.
If McCain picks Bolton (and I sure hope he does) the Left would go absolutely ape. It’d be entertaining to watch.
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