Obama's opening
Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 09:17AM With the conventions done, both sides seem to be set in their strategies.
Over the next 60 days, McCain and Palin are going to criss-cross the interior of the country -- focusing on key midwestern and western battleground states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Mexico -- with their reform message. They're going to be running as much against the "do-nothing" Congress -- and even the Bush administration to some extent -- as they are against Obama and Biden. They've tried to wrestle the change agenda away from Obama, and only time will tell if they've been successful.
It's a smart strategy -- probably the only way a Republican could win in an overwhelmingly Democratic year -- and it wouldn't have been possible but for the selection of Sarah Palin. She's fired up the Republican faithful -- something McCain had failed miserably at -- and freed him up to reclaim his maverick status. Put simply, conservatives will look the other way on McCain the maverick (a character they've never really loved) knowing that Sarah Palin is right behind him. It seems to be working -- the latest polls show the race back in a dead heat -- but it's yet to be seen if it can win-over the remaining undecideds.
But this strategy comes with a price -- it's short on specifics. McCain's speech had few details about what he'd do as president because there's little the Republicans can offer these days. The surge is working -- and that's a winning issue for McCain -- but on virtually every domestic issue the Republicans are bereft of new ideas.
And team Obama knows that. I wouldn't be surprised if they recast the election as a referendum on the economy, which is far and away their strongest issue -- and McCain's weakest. Neither McCain nor Palin has much credibility on pocket book issues -- McCain practically admitted as much during the primaries -- and consequently they've offered few specifics on how they'd handle the economy. Obama should tear a page from Hillary's playbook and go directly to working-class voters in battleground states and paint the Republicans as out of touch (something she did successfully against Obama when he was vague on specifics).
With the employment situation weaking -- the unemployment rate hit 6.1% on Friday, the worst mark in 5 years -- there's a huge opportunity for Obama to make it "about the economy, stupid." It's going to come down to the populist Democrats v the reformer Republicans.
Reader Comments (4)
Great post. It will be interesting to see the role Hillary plays here for Obama. Aggressive campaigning can help him win back those thet may have fallen head over heels for Palin, especially those blue collar folks that clamored for her. But there is no doubt in my mind she is privately hoping for a McCain win, which will put her in play for '12. It is all about her after all and she relishes the position she find herself in...puts her back in play with lots of chips on the table.
What are your thoughts on this Nick? Will she go all-out for him?
I think Hillary will do just enough campaigning so that it appears she went all out -- without really going all out. Her convention speech was a minimalist endorsement of Obama, and I think she'll campaign the same way. If Obama loses, Hillary will not be blamed -- it's beyond that. If he loses, it's because McCain will have outflanked him on change. I still think Obama is a 3-1 favorite, but Palin closes the enthusiasm gap, and that could be the x factor when it comes to getting out the vote.
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