Here are my long-promised thoughts on the democratic convention. This is going to seem a bit like 20/20 hindsight, but i promise i held all these beliefs before Obama’s rise in the polls the last month. I believe now, as I did during the primaires, that Obama is the perfect candidate for the Democrats at this point in time, both for the short- and long-scale strategies of the Democratic party.
In the short term, the Democrats needed someone to take advantage of the advantages they had over the Republicans in this election cycle: a sitting Republican president with historically low approval numbers, an unpopular war overseas, a sluggish economy (that has now taken a turn for the worse), and a base and infrastructure that was primed for a map-changing voter registration and GOTV effort. In short, the country is ready for change and the Democrats needed to nominate someone who embodied that change. Clearly, Obama does so. Hillary Clinton, who was vying to be the first-ever female president of the United States of America, also symbolically represented change. However, her ties to a former President and her longer amount of time in the public limelight made her less of a “change candidate.” Indeed, her best days in the primary came when her campaign questioned Obama’s experience and argued he was not ready to assume the role of Commander-in-Chief. That’s not the argument you make if you’re “the change candidate.” Ultimately, i think Hillary Clinton would have won the general election, as the populist message she adopted towards the end of her campaign would have been very succesful in the general election – particularly given the recent economic downturn. And her path to an electoral college victory would have been clear: John Kerry states (251 electoral votes) + Florida (27 electoral votes) = victory. She also likely would have expanded the map to include West Virginia, Arkansas, and perhaps a coule other states while keeping Ohio in play. However, even that doesn’t match the map Obama is pressing now, as Iowa and New Mexico already seemed poised to turn blue this year and Colorado, West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and perhaps even Georgia are all currently in play for the Obama campaign. He only needs one more states to flip to blue (in addition to Iowa and New Mexico) to win the election, which is why he is currently projected to win 87.4% of the elections simulated by Nate Silver at www.FiveThirtyEight.com. Obama is almost a sure thing to win at this point, and the concerns people had during the nomination: that he couldnt carry Michigan and/or Florida because he didn’t campaign there during the primary and dissed the voters, that he can’t convince old, white women to vote for him, that he can’t win OH or PA because of his Appalachian problem, that he has ties to seedy characters and the Republicans are going to blow him out of the water for it, etc., etc., etc, – they all seem silly now, Part of the reason for this (and the turn towards Obama in the polls) is that elections are driven as much by news cycles as they are by the messaging/branding/campaigning done by the candidates and their surrogates. This election turned on a dime (soon to be worth a nickel), when Wall Street had a really, really bad day a couple weeks ago. But i honestly think that just accelerated an inevitable shift of the populace towards Obama, as its primary function was to put the convention storylines in the rearview mirror and turn the debate towards the issues. That’s something that would have happened a week later, anyways, once the debates started. The point is, people in Michicagn and Florida don’t care nearly as much about Obama’s position with regards to the delegates to the (now past) democratic convention as they do his policies with respect to regulation of credit markets. And voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio don’t care as much about William Ayers and Reverand Wright as they do John Keating and Phil Gramm. In the end, I expect John McCain to take a beting from the far-right wing of the Republican party when he loses this election. But in all honesty there’s not much he or anyone else could have done to win it. The deck was stacked against them, and they were up against a political team that knew how to play well when dealt a strong hand.
To make matters worse for the Republicans, it appears that the Democrats have finally found their long-awaited answer to Ronald Reagan in Barack Obama, who also appears set to follow through on the promise showed by Howard Dean’s conection to the grassroots in 2004. What the Democrats have needed for a long time now is someone that can translate liberal/progressive policies into values held by Americans and the morals espoused by American mythology and history. I don’t think there’s been a single Democrat in my lifetime that does it as well as this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoFwZUp5vc]
That was Barack Obama’s victory speech after winning the Iowa caucuses. It seamlessly ties together the values behind the policies he supports with his personal story, the personal stories of average Americans, and the great story that is “America.” His rhetoric has been less lofty in the general election, as he’s tried to show he’s about more than “hope,” “change,” and “pretty speeches,” and is now trying to woo voters instead of fire up the base to vote and volunteer for him. But if you think he will not return to this general style again, you are sorely mistaken. I expect a similar speech leading up to election day, and if he were to win you’d see a constant stream of lofty speeches from his victory speech on election night, to his inauguration address, to his annual state of the union speeches. And when he delivers those speeches, with powerful imagery combined with a charismatic speaker all placed in the context of the power of the bully pulpit, large changes in the dynamics of the electorate should be expected.
Combine Obama’s speaking prowess with his history as a community organizer and the degree to which the grassroots of the Democratic party are more fired up than they have been for a generation, and you have the potential for an election that will change the political alignment of this country for the next 10-20 years. The volunteering efforts in support of the Obama campaign are unprecidented and they’re blowing the opposing efforts from the McCain campaign out of the water. Having a great speaker helps convince people to volunteer (the volunteers on the Republican side seem to be overwhelmingly driven by their love for Sarah Palin), but in addition to attracting volunteers, the ability to organize those volunteers is something new on the Democratic side of the ticket. This year, the Democrats have spent an unprecidented amount on field offices and paid staff, which leads to more people making phone calls, registering voters, and knocking on doors. Additionally, they’ve upgraded their ability to handle the data collected by these efforts. This all has two advantages: 1.) a huge edge on the McCain campaign on word-of-mouth advertsising, and 2.) a huge increase in effiency at getting Obama supporters to the polls. The first of those is taken into account by polls but the second one is not. It may be that the pre-election polls may underestimate Obama’s support by a couple points due to their inability to account for the newfound efficiency on the Democratic side of the ticket. This will also help downticket races for Senate, Governorships, and House seats, and will indoctrinate a new generation of Democratic volunteers that will be called upon again in future elections.
What does this all add up to? Well, for one… a landslide in favor of the Democrats. Unless something changes the storyline dramatically between now and election day, i’d expect Obama to get over 350 electoral votes and ~53% of the popular vote. But that’s not the worst news for Republicans. No, the worst news is that they’ll be facing a president that will have the potential to change the map so its as unfavorable to them as it has been for Democrats the last 25 years. And the reasons why things are changing are the characteristics that many of them choose to mock. Yes, Obama is a celebrity. Yes, he gives wonderful speeches. Yes, he is a community organizer. And yes… that is also a big part of why the Republican party is in big trouble.
That’s probably it for my political postings for a bit. I’ll try to post my election predictions at the beginning of next month, and then after that a roadmap for where both parties can and should go in the coming years. But barring a major Obama gaffe at one of the last two debates or a dramatic news development unfolding (like John McCain personally catching Osama Bin Laden) i’m guessing the only suspense in the 2008 election will be whether or not the Democrats achieve a fillibuster-proof 60 seat majority in the Senate.
However, the baseball offseason is (unforunately) here. Ironically, this means I’ll try to write a little bit more about baseball, as i won’t be watching the games and i’m also going to be racing to prepare my statistical projection model in advance of the 2009 season. I’ll have one very brief baseball post tonight and then some descriptions of other baseball models before unveiling my model and its successes (and failures) at predicting the 2008 season statistics.
