Election 2008: My Early Projections
Politics, Presidential Race 2008 September 9th. 2008, 9:21amNow that just about every attack on Palin has been thumpingly rebutted by well-regarded neutrals, about the only thing left hanging over her head is Troopergate. Unfortunately for Democrats, nobody cares about Troopergate. At worst, she will be seen as bending but not breaking rules in order to get rid of someone who was protecting a wife-beating child-tasering nightmare of a cop. She was entitled to fire the guy because she didn’t like his shifty eyes; that she has any reason at all (even personal reasons) will just make it more OK with the electorate. The library thing had more potential resonance – is she a scary book-burning fundie? – and that, too, is down the drain.
More the the point, at this date she can pretty much come out and refer to Hymietown, slap a wounded returning soldier for cowardice, and take a million-dollar check from Exxon at high noon in Times Square with “bribe” written in the memo field in 100-point type, and nobody will believe it. The shotgun salvo of slime that was fired at her from day one, and which across the board has been resoundingly disproved and rebutted, in some cases humiliatingly for the media “leaders” who drank too much Kool-Aid, made it clear to the electorate that there are big chunks of the media (from blogs to glossies) who will say and do anything to smear her, out of fear that she will derail the crowning of the Chosen One. “Yeah, yeah, what other lies are you going to print today” is now the default reaction to negative Palin news, and I don’t see that changing in time to effect the election.
Here’s my call for the elections.
Obama’s convention bounce was about two points, and it dissipated as those bounces do. There was no bounce from the Republican convention, because the convention (Palin’s speech aside) was a near-disaster. (I’ve never heard more boring Republican speeches in my life, and I’ve heard a lot of boring Republican speeches.) Instead, the post-Palin shift in the polling is structural; it’s a big chunk of purple America deciding that they (a) love her and (b) hate the people who have been smearing her grotesquely from the moment she came onto the national stage, who (rightly or wrongly) are tightly bound up with Obama and his friendly media in the public view. McCain has shifted the race by as much as ten percentage points, permanently, and will go down in history as making the most electorally significant VP pick ever. (And so much for the conventional wisdom that VP picks change nothing.)
The Wilder effect is very likely operative in this election, and is probably worth about four or five points. (Voters are reluctant to tell pollsters they aren’t going to vote for a black candidate, so they lie.) On paper, McCain has been a few points behind for months; in reality, McCain has been a little bit behind or a little bit ahead all through the general season, and is now solidly ahead by at least a few points. He will win in the EC comfortably but not overwhelmingly, and will somewhat blunt the Democratic gains in the Congress.
The “why” of all this is simple. Palin is an outstanding VP candidate, and has won real votes from millions of people who previously leaned Obama or didn’t know who to vote for. In addition, enthusiasm for her has revitalized a GOP establishment which was unenthusiastic at best. On the flip side, Obama is an unqualified candidate, and everyone not enthusiastically waving banners for him knows it. He captured the nomination by winning the hearts of the party’s activist base, but cannot win in the general election. Hillary knew this and she and Bill were both crucified for daring to even allude to it; after Obama’s defeat destroys the hope of a unified Democratic administration and Congress, there will be a great deal of bitter recrimination and a lot more infighting as the finger of blame gets passed around.
Many hard-left news sources (such as the spectacularly unconvincing “Sambo” article that’s been circling the drain for the last few days) will froth in denial of these new facts on the ground for the next couple of months, but they will convince noone but themselves; there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth on November 5. (“How could this happen when everything I read says that it wouldn’t?”)
You have to love the Democrats; they basically have every advantage they could have short of God himself descending from the Throne and announcing “Vote Democrat, all my children!”, and they’ve thrown it away. No Presidency, and what should have been veto-proof majorities in both houses will instead be just another slight pro-Dem shift. (If the Obama campaign completely implodes as their defeat looms, it might even be a neutral race in terms of Congressional outcomes, as dispirited Democratic voters don’t bother to turn out for the down-ticket races, but I don’t think they’ll completely implode.)
So, it’ll be McCain but not by a landslide, and a range of Congressional outcomes somewhere between modest Democratic gains in both houses to no major shift in either house, depending on how well the Obama campaign handles its slow-motion defeat.
You can apply a wishful-thinking discount to this if you want – I won’t pretend that this isn’t an outcome I don’t want to see. However, I’m already applying a wishful-thinking discount internally, and secretly expect a McCain blowout and no big losses in Congress for the GOP, despite our richly deserving them.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Bob,
Factcheck.org is NOT neutral.
It must be noted that FactCheck.org is strongly affiliated with the Annenberg Center, founded by archconservative Walter Annenberg.
Moreover, you are either being lazy or intellectually dishonest.
Allow me show you
YES Palin actually slashed funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%.
FY2007 Component Budget: $8,265,300
FY2008 Component Budget: $3,156,000
FY2009 Component Budget: $3,156,000
“I told the Congress “thanks, but no thanks,” for that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”
Just to reiterate what others have said: Congress’ requirement that funds be spent on that bridge (aka the ‘earmark’) were removed before Sarah Palin became governor. She was therefore in no position to tell Congress anything about the bridge, one way or the other. During her campaign, she said she supported funding for the bridge. Brad Plumer, citing the Anchorage Daily News via Nexis:
“5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?
Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now–while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”
Later, she accepted the money — now not restricted by an earmark — and used it for other infrastructure projects. Here’s her statement about why she wasn’t building the bridge (also via Plumer.) Decide for yourselves what role a principled opposition to earmark funding plays in it. Hint: here’s what residents of Ketchikan AK said when they heard her recent remarks:
“In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska’s Congressional delegation during her run for governor. (..)
“People are learning that she pandered to us by saying, I’m for this’ … and then when she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term that she said was insulting,” Weinstein said.”
source (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/politics/animal/main4414049.shtml)
September 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am
FactCheck.org is widely regarded as trustworthy and neutral. Their affiliation with a foundation created by a conservative is immaterial; the Ford Foundation was created by a racist xenophobe, but their programs are squishy-liberal. If you’re going to attack them, you’re going to need to provide some evidence that they are not credible. Good luck with that, since they do a very good job of being fair.
Your budget figures are wrong. As FactCheck explains, some funds got moved from one program to another. However, the actual spending on special needs kids went up.
I agree that Palin went back and forth on the bridge funding, but I don’t think it’s a big deal for anyone other than the left-wingers who are, in Dick Morris’ immortal phrase, “existentially threatened” by Palin’s ascent.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Here you go Bob:
http://thephoenix.com/blogs/dontquoteme/archive/2008/09/10/the-quot-sliming-quot-of-palin-did-factcheck-exaggerate.aspx
September 11th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Factcheck.org operates at a level of amateurishness that is totally inappropriate for the position of final arbiter of truth that it has claimed for itself.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
This is hardly an isolated incident. Factcheck.org was particularly weak during the Social Security debate, as Josh Marshall noted on several occasions. In one instance, they deemed false a claim that privatization would yield big fee income for Wall Street, asserting that Bush’s proposal was just like the federal employees’ Thrift Savings Plan, which doesn’t cost much to administer. That was wrong, of course, because the administration had said that it’s plan would be different from the TSP and was never specific about it anyway. Yet in another case, they deemed as false specific statements about the cuts in benefits that would ensue from the Bush plan by arguing that Bush had not yet proposed a specific plan. Either he had proposed a plan or he hadn’t. (In fact the one thing that Bush had been fairly specific about was the cuts in guaranteed benefits that would flow from his shift to partial price indexing.)
Factcheck.org also attacked a People for the American Way ad during the nuclear option debate. Factcheck opined that it was “ironic” that the NAACP and other groups were opposing the nuclear option, given that it was the filibuster that had long postponed civil rights legislation. It may have been ironic, but that has nothing to do with the truth of the ad’s assertion that the filbuster was an important check on the consequences of lifetime appointments of extremist judges. (What was more ironic was that this charge was an exact replay of a Republican talking point.)
Is factcheck.org politically biased? Perhaps or perhaps not. The problem is that they get played, and I think the GOP has been more aggressive about playing them. If you set yourself up as the last word on the truth or falsehood of ads, you will immediately be the addresse of a lot of spin. Factcheck obviously wants to respond quickly, and they want to respond with clear assertions of truth or falsehood, unlike many of the newspaper “ad watch” projects which are so mealy-mouthed that a reader winds up more confused after reading it than before. But trying to fulfill those two goals, its far too easy to read the first spin that comes in on the fax, conclude that it sounds persuasive, and run with it.
Newspapers make errors, blogs make errors, political ads stretch the truth and make errors. But to have the credibility to be the ultimate arbiter of truth in political discourse, factcheck.org has to be impeccable. They have to limit their assertions to things that can be said with certainty and they need to at the very least correct their errors immediately. Factcheck.org has forfeited the opportunity to play that role.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Here we have a nice dissection of factcheck.org’s errors in regard to the NARAL ad circa 05′:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/08/still-more-on-naral-ad.html
September 11th, 2008 at 10:59 am
You argument is unimpressive. If you don’t want to accept FactCheck.org as a source, that’s fine, but most people will, and in politics it’s what most people do that matters. The attacks on Palin have been largely untrue, and greatly overblown where there has been some germ of truth. That Factcheck.org doesn’t agree with your exact spin on a few issues doesn’t make them wrong or untrustworthy; they’re mortal, same as the rest of us. I notice that you aren’t arguing the points on Palin.