The key to winning the White House in November became clear last week, and it wasn't in the soaring oratory of Barack Obama or the stumbling discourse of John McCain. It came in the form of a poll by Rasmussen Reports, a polling service I frequently quote on this blog.
It stated that 67 percent of Americans believe that the federal government has become an interest group of its own and serves its own will. Only 17 percent of voters agreed that our national leadership represents the will of the people.
I frequently caution against putting your trust into the results of one poll, so I don't necessarily believe those specific figures. But that's a really big number, and an awfully small one. Whether the 67 percent or 17 percent are really accurate or not, who knows, but the trend is obvious. The idea that people are displeased with the federal government is upheld thoroughly by other polls showing that support for President Bush and Congress are at historic lows.
There are clearly a lot of disaffected people out there, and the presidential candidate who reaches them first and most effectively will win the general election.
The favorite to get to the disaffected first is the Democrat candidate, Obama. Momentum is with him and his party, and his "hope" and "change" message still resonates with a lot of people. He will continue to position himself as someone who can push through dramatic changes in government programs and will have the benefit of a favorable media that will make his proposals appear popular.
Obama will also receive the benefit of a simple assumption that many of the disaffected are that way because they are Democrats or liberal independents critical of the Bush administration's health care and environmental record and are upset that neither the president nor Congress can get us out of Iraq.
In McCain, the disaffected are confronted with an old candidate who has been in Congress for decades and will continue America's wars. Not much change likely there -- especially if he allows the Democrats to tar him with the "Bush's Third Term" label.
The Arizona senator shouldn't be counted out of the race for disaffected voters, however. In fact, I think he has as good a chance at getting them as Obama does.
Here’s why. Obama will get a sizable bounce in the polls now that Hillary Clinton has pulled the plug on her campaign, but the fundamentals of his candidacy that prevented him from burying her earlier still exist. The poll indicated that many disaffected voters are also Republicans, likely upset at Congress for playing politics with Iraq and energy instead of leading the country. Moderates and conservatives will not go for Obama's liberalism. In fact, with Obama listed as the senator farthest to the left, there are a lot of folks who aren't going to vote for him .
McCain, even though he's been in Congress for ages, also has a record as something of a maverick, so he might be the one guy who could survive association with that institution. His efforts on behalf of immigration reform, campaign finance reform and trying to break the logjam of approving justice appointments earned him bad marks from conservatives but could now be looked upon as the product of someone who is at least trying to break governmental inertia. He's trying something while the others are fooling around.
These disaffected voters want someone who speaks plainly and will confront the problems we face head-on. McCain can easily fill that role.
Anyway, we're talking about two-third of the electorate. My bet is of them, a third are probably naturally set up to go to Obama and another third will go toward McCain. The battle will be over the middle third. With it will come the White House and, for Obama a friendly Congress or for McCain, a limit to the GOP losses in the legislative branch.
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Two things in California favor McCain and should make his campaign staff reconsider their decision to not spend much money in the Golden State. First will be the presence of the latest ballot initiative to ban gay marriage. You know which side the two candidates will land on, so the majority in every such election favors McCain. Obama could make himself too plainly liberal even for Californians.
Second, while there is much hand-wringing over McCain's poor performance in his speech Tuesday night, there is evidence that Republican worries could be overblown. In San Diego, voters handed Mayor Jerry Sanders an overwhelming first-ballot re-election victory. Like McCain, Sanders is a sort of rumpled, plain speaking and not terribly smooth problem solver. Those who follow the news know that the city of San Diego has faced a fiscal mess, and Sanders has been working on it.
The challenger, millionaire businessman Steve Francis, is glib, handsome and slick. Think Mitt Romney right down to the position changes. He spent millions in advertising ripping Sanders to shreds. By election day, San Diegans were sick to death of Francis and returned Sanders to office.
The public just might have more of a taste for old, rumpled problem-solvers than slickly marketed politicians.
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