This Almost Makes Day

This Almost Makes Day

The McCain/Obama contest is all tied up right now. According to the July 13, 2008 Rasmussen Report:

For the second straight day, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that the race for the White House is tied. Sunday’s numbers show Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 43% of the vote. When "leaners" are included, the two candidates are tied at 46%. For most of the past month-and-a-half, Obama has led McCain by approximately five percentage points. It will take a few more days to determine whether this recent tightening of the race reflects real change or is merely statistical noise. (see recent daily results). Tracking Polls are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day (see recent demographic highlights).

There are a couple of ways of looking at this.

1. McCain is an uninspiring candidate, but Obama's recent flip-flops (reminiscent of how McGovern tried to tack to the center during the general election in 1972, after appealing to the radical wing of the party in the primaries) have disappointed the hard left of the electorate, and taken some of the pixie dust out of the eyes of the idealists who deluded themselves that Obama wasn't just another politician. (Do you remember the 1972 Nixon campaign ad that showed McGovern's picture on a windvane? They would quote McGovern from the primaries, then flip the picture around to face the other direction, and show what McGovern had said most recently. It was devastating.)

2. McCain is sufficiently far to the middle of the American political spectrum that a lot of moderates who would otherwise not consider voting for a Republican who supported the social conservative agenda have decided that McCain's foreign policy experience--and Obama's nearly inconsequential experience in foreign affairs--means that they will vote for McCain.

And in the promises, promises category, the July 11, 2008 Irish Times quotes Robert Redford about the results if Obama loses:

IF BARACK Obama doesn't win November's presidential election in the United States, "you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye", the actor and director Robert Redford told an audience in Dublin last night.

If only that were the case! Perhaps what Redford means is that he and the rest of the multimillionaire and billionaire hard left wing of the Democratic Party will pick up their substantial marbles and go home for an election or two, before finding another hard left candidate over whom they can swoon, and then do the lemmings off the cliff stunt again.

Here's the bad news for Redford and friends: only about 2% of Americans are rich enough to be Michael Moore/George Soros/Laurie David/George Clooney type of radical left Democrats. This crowd has a lot of influence on (my guess) another 20-25% of Americans, generally people that fancy themselves intellectuals or sophisticates because they look down their nose at country music, NASCAR, Christianity (except in its most liberal and largely empty forms), and patriotism. But that's not enough to consistently win national elections--just as social conservatives aren't a large enough fraction of Americans to consistently win national elections.