It has been a while since we spoke about the presidential election, mostly because we need the break. The key to maintaining sanity until November is to pace oneself. Nonetheless I have a pair of related questions that need answering.
Please note that they are not rhetorical.
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1. With every indicator suggesting that the Democratic candidate should have a decided advantage in the general election, why does current polling show McCain ahead or in a dead heat?
2. What exactly is McCain's appeal?
On the first point, if you read this website regularly you are well aware of how I feel about public opinion polling in general and mass media-conducted polling in particular. At its top-dollar best it is wildly inaccurate, unstable, and susceptible to enormous variance from factors as prosaic as question order and syntax. At its worst it is flat-out misleading.
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This general skepticism aside, I do believe that polls measure something and therefore have value. And despite the fact that Democratic primary turnout has dwarfed GOP turnout in nearly every state, often by lopsided margins, the statistically insignificant portion of the electorate that is polled seems evenly divided. I am not overly fond of the media trope about how well McCain appeals to "moderates" and "undecided" voters, as any such appeal would logically be offset by what he loses in far-right evangelical Christian support. Have McCain and his pandering sluts in the media successfully programmed Americans into thinking that he is some sort of ideological maverick / pragmatist / magical shaman? How so many Americans could claim to want the war to end while professing support for this guy is beyond me.
Second, what is McCain's appeal? I struggle to think of a major presidential candidate who is or was a worse public speaker. He looks like he's delivering his speeches off of index cards – and at gunpoint. He talks into his chest, he appears to be dangerously close to falling asleep during his speeches, he has that Al Gore 2000-style pedantic tone of voice, and the only things he says with any conviction are that A) torture is bad and B) we need to start a few more wars in the middle east. He's not attractive, he's not young, he's not energetic, and his "message" is a pastiche of ideas taken from the past 30 years of GOP candidates. Most importantly, he's not appealing to the hardcore conservative base.
To whom is this bag of fluid appealing? And how?
Mysteries, at least to me.
Brandon says:
I agree with you regarding the mysticism of McCain's appeal, Ed. I'm not sure what to think of the poll numbers. I tend to see a few reasons for Dems to be optimistic. First, I think that once the Dems choose their nominee, and it looks like it will be Obama, that will give the candidate a boost. Second, I agree with you about McCain's lack of charisma. This is one of the things that I never really paid attention to before this campaign. I still have a certain degree of respect for the guy, and I don't think that his reputation as a maverick is completely undeserved, but I've been amazed at what a terrible, boring speaker he is. Once the general election starts and people's become more and more exposed to his droning voice and awkward humor, it will hurt him. Third, I believe that the controversies surrounding his lobbying connections will resurface. Right now the furor has been directed at the NY Times for supposedly making unfounded insinuations about his romantic ties to this woman, but all the other stuff in the article was pretty serious and I think that it will be a problem for him. That said, it is stunning to me that he is running even in the polls, even against Obama.
JDryden says:
"Have McCain and his pandering sluts in the media successfully programmed Americans into thinking that he is some sort of ideological maverick / pragmatist / magical shaman?"
Yes.
It's also, on an incredibly superficial level, to present McCain as a 'change' from Bush, because of the obvious personal dissimilarities between them: Bush–vapid, Jesus-lovin', slow-witted, draft-dodging, genial, easy-going, good-ol-boyish, etc. McCain–pretty much the opposite of all these. What nobody seems to notice is that the policies of the two men overlap in ways that would send supposed 'moderates'–translation: people who cannot bother to do enough research to make up their f***ing minds–running for the hills.
McCain right now is, I would argue, being helped by the bile of people too closely associated with Bush, whom everyone hates–moderates who might want to vote for Obama hear Limbaugh say "Obama's better than McCain" and rethink their position. But once that turns around, I think the poll numbers will as well.
Peggy says:
Is is possible that he wins in the polls because Dems are split? i.e., 40% McCain, 30% Clinton, 30% Obama or similar?
I am likewise mystified if that's not a solution.