It's still Obama's race

A lot has happened in the presidential race to reflect upon.  And then again, not a whole lot.  The dynamics of the race still favor Obama.  Yet I would agree with a headline I saw two months ago, that it's Obama's race to win, not Obama's race to lose.  

First of all we can assess the conventions from a distance now.  The Democrats had a good convention.  The Republicans had a spectacular convention.  Obama received a bump, but the Republicans quickly neutralized it with the Palin pick the Friday after, and a solid convention that highlighted their VP pick.  McCain took his first lead in the polls since the head-to-head with Obama was secured in June.  

You can see how the race has looked from the graphs above.  First is the intrade price for McCain.  This is driven by a market consisting of people who are putting their money where their mouth is, picking McCain or Obama to win.  Only very recently has McCain been given over a 50% chance by this market.  

After the Palin pick and the Republican convention, Democrats were all in a tizzy.  Glum.  Doom and gloom.  The Palin picked worked on so many levels.  First of all is the "regular person" effect.  McCain is a longtime senator married to a rich heiress--he's more like John Kerry than Joe Sixpack.  Palin gives him the regular-person feel, which they can use against Obama, portraying him as an elitist.  It really was so remarkable, and was remarked upon ad nauseum, that Obama did not get a bump from his overseas trip.  His polls did not nudge.  Not a bit.  In fact he actually lost ground to McCain, as can be best seen in the supertracker poll aggregation graph (from fivethirtyeight.com), and also in McCain's rise in the intrade graph.  All the Obama team's hard work down the crapper, with one McCain Paris Hilton ad.  That ad has over 2 million views now on YouTube.  

Secondly, Palin fires up the base of the party.  They are drooling about getting one of their own in power, grooming her for the future from Mass. Av.  She is such an attractive politician, and the effect she has on conservatives is similar to the effect Obama has on liberals--finally we have someone who can represent our views and look good on TV doing it, without bringing up the baggage of the past (Clinton, Bush).  

Third, Palin appeals to a key demographic--married voters in the midwest.  Palin sounds exactly like a Wisconsin hockey mom.  This helps McCain in Minnesota, a key swing state in that it's the only one McCain really has the ability to take from Obama.  As Jay Cost has noted, it was winning the demographic of white women that made the difference for the GOP from losing in '96 to winning in '00 and '04.  

So Palin was a great pick.  She just has to look poised on TV from now until the election, as Jay Cost has also noted.  That's doable.  

However, I stand by my early analysis of Palin.  As we go along, Palin will lose some of her star appeal.  She will begin to wear more thin.  Attention will be diverted to other things.  

Democrats should not panick.  Even already in this past week there has been a rebounding in the polls for Obama, who is now barely up.  Democrats should ask themselves this question: did they honestly think that McCain would never be up in the polls against their man?  McCain had a great convention and a great VP pick, and he benefited from that.  But he will need more than that.  He will need Obama to fail to close the deal with Americans.  If Obama stumbles, McCain will win.  If Obama does not stumble, but fails to close the deal, McCain could back into the White House just like he won the GOP primary by a whisker.  

And that was the problem with the Democratic convention.  It did not close the deal with the American electorate.  I had one big problem with the convention: it did not give us a reason to vote for Obama.  Voting is about emotion, but not just the emotion of an indefinite mood.  Emotions are tied to explicable reasons.  There are reasons you feel angry or hopeful or pensive.  Campaigns need to conjure them up.  Playing not to lose, in sports as in politics, means you will lose 95% of the time.  The Republicans are too good for Obama to try to coast to victory.  Plus Republicans have a natural presidential majority--Democrats haven't won a majority of the votes cast for president in the last 30 years.  

The Democratic convention did not go after McCain enough.  It simply didn't.  It seemed like all the "new politics" bs was being taken seriously.  I've had some conversations with the Obama organizer in my county (I live in Ohio's swing district par excellance--the middle of the Democratic "C" in the eastern part of the state), and it was almost worrisome how he took the "new politics" line so seriously, and indeed seemed to be already making excuses as to why Obama would lose the state!  The Republicans had no qualms about going on the attack.  

Obama did better in his speech at the convention, and he's starting to go on the attack now.   There's plenty to attack.  One of the pitfalls of having a long voting record is there's plenty of things to attack.  From Bill Press: 

In 2000, McCain supported legislation authored by Sen. Phil Gramm that forbade federal agencies from regulating financial derivatives that greased the skids for passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors. Today we’re suffering the consequences.Gramm’s legislation was the key. Without it, AIG could never have veered from the solid ground of life insurance onto the shaky ground of sub-prime mortgages. And John McCain championed that legislation.

The changing economic situation clearly benefits Obama.  It reminds everyone of the failures and lies and mismanagement of the Bush administration.  Bad news on the ins watch will almos always help the outs.  But it has to be utilized.  From David Sirota:

Until this week, Obama largely avoided the contrasting FDR-style populism the nation wants and the moment demands.

For example, instead of endorsing forceful re-regulation months ago when the financial meltdown commenced, Obama responded with a vague white paper that not only offered few hard-hitting prescriptions, but denigrated key Depression-era regulations.

Likewise, despite slipping in the industrial heartland, Obama has muted his criticism of NAFTA. Indeed, one Obama adviser last week called trade only "an issue of symbolic importance."