A Big "Win" Is A-coming?

Big Win or Moderate Win: But a Win for Obama, No Matter:
Senator Barack Obama is headed toward a victory on November 4th. After the longest and most expensive Presidential campaign on record, one that ran exceptionally close in the primaries and then very close for much of the general election, Obama is today headed toward a win that could range between very large to moderate, but not the nail biter we generally expected. At the moment, his lead is between 6 and 11 points, averaging close to 8, with leads growing in many of the states that were two weeks ago very close such as Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

The October Predictable Republican “Nasty” Campaign – DOA!
McCain has just plain run out of steam and arguments, and it shows. The nasty recent commentary delivered by Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain may excite his partisan crowds, but it is falling very flat with the rest of the electorate. Obama seems to grow more confident and effective even as both McCain and Palin seem to shrink before our eyes.
The much anticipated campaign of “guilt by association”, orchestrated by Dick Morris (Fox analyst) and Fox Television and supported by already prepared ads from the McCain campaign and its allies is falling flat on its face. Instead of the attack raising issues about Obama, the media is filled with speculation about the desperation of the McCain campaign and commentary about the end of journalism at FOX, which has never much cared about professional journalism anyway. The campaign was already Dead on Arrival!

The public today has a pretty good “feel” for whom the real Barack Obama is, and he is simply nothing like the absurd “distortions” against his character. As I argued earlier, the very long campaign has “insulated” Obama from this campaign in a way that a shorter campaign could not have accomplished. The attack plays well with the most extreme of the McCain partisans, but not with anyone else. Instead, the nasty charges just make the “attackers” look weak, mean spirited, cheap, and a little dirty – smaller by the day!

John McCain is simply getting killed politically by events and his own choices. His choice for a running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, has turned out to be a real disaster. She is regarded as an inappropriate choice by nearly everyone other than the Republican apologists who attempt to “spin” her inexperience into golden originality. The “abuse of her authority” conclusion in the firing of her police commissioner is just the icing on the cake. She was McCain’s very first Presidential “choice”, and she was a bad one; both politically for the campaign and for the American people. In a way, his choice was a perfect reflection of McCain’s personality – impulsive, risky, and wrong.

The Financial Crisis Undermines McCain:
The financial crisis has undermined McCain in many ways. First, it has upped the stakes for all Americans, making our individual votes matter much more to us. Second, Americans prefer the Obama response – cool, analytical and measured – to the McCain response – hot, impulsive, and erratic. Third, the crisis is the logical consequence of the financial world created under the Republicans, and it simply has to spill over to McCain no matter how much he attempts to distance himself from Bush. Finally, Obama’s obvious intelligence has become more important to voters precisely because of the complexity of the crisis. Voters are valuing “smart” more today than two weeks ago.

How Large is the Obama/Democratic Victory?
The only issue left is how large the margin might be – somewhere between 6 and 12 points I think, but we will not know until we can know both the turnout and the swing of undecided voters in the final week. Both of these variables have the potential now to swing the final outcome by up to four points – two points for differential turnout and two points for the undecided, enough to make things closer, but not enough to win.

My best guess is as follows: Obama will win the turnout battle, with the young and African Americans voting in much higher numbers than normal and some dispirited Republicans staying home. Obama’s organizational effort is dramatically superior to anything the Republicans can put in the field, and his voters have demonstrated higher levels of motivation from the beginning.

The real effect of the turnout battle, however, will be on marginal House and Senate races. The Democrats will gain substantial seats in the House, but I have no estimate of how many. They are quite likely to win as many 60 seats in the Senate. Whether they win 60 is down to a couple of races which are virtually tied, but where a voter surge could easily carry them for the Democrats. Democrats are suddenly competitive in far too many seats to count, and a three or four point bulge in Democratic voting is going to lift a lot of campaigns to victory. There will be affects at every level of voting.

On the last minute undecided swing, I think many of these people are simply not going to vote, but that Obama will win a plurality, perhaps 60 to 40, of those who do vote. At that margin, it might swing one point more to his margin.

In a sense, the financial crisis coupled with the ineptness of the McCain campaign is pushing the Democratic Presidential vote much closer to the Democratic Congressional vote. During this campaign, many analysts have noted that Obama’s vote was running well behind the vote for the Democrats in Congress, with his “race” the factor pulling the Obama vote lower. However, the actual vote for the President and Congress (according to the most recent polls) are likely to be much closer to each other with the clear meaning that many fewer American voters in the end allowed race to override their other concerns.

That is a fairly profound statement about the status of “race” in American life. In the end, we Americans appear to care more about our families and our economic well being than we do about a person’s race, and that is how it should be in the “better world” we are creating.

A Smaller Republican Party in the Future:
The Republicans are about to pay a very high price for the policies of the past eight years, and the general incompetence and corruption of the Bush Administration. The Democrats are going to be handed the strongest control over the government in modern times, and it is the start of a realigning period that will leave the Republicans a minority party – mostly Evangelical, Christian Conservatives – for many years to come. I argued that point in my blog early in February, where you can find the full rationale.

The Republicans have gainfully earned this painful rebuke by the American electorate. If they continue to genuflect to their right wing religious base, they will be delivered more rebukes in the future. The right wing is going to plague the Republican Party into the future, dominating the nomination processes and producing candidates who are less able to compete in general elections.

A sensible and pragmatic Democratic government will earn high marks, but they still have to deliver policies that a majority of Americans can embrace. Nothing is ever guaranteed. These are troubled times, both economically and militarily. We all would like a calm, but decisive, leadership at the helm, and Obama may prove to be the man for the times.

Just my opinion,

Gordon Black