Desperation Strategies

Ambinder reports:

Here's the start of that Obama bump, per Gallup. It ain't gonna be 15 points by the time of the convention, but there are some in McCain's world who legitimately believe that McCain will NEVER be ahead in the popular vote (but will still win the election.)

For one thing, I agree with Josh Patashnik that the popular and electoral votes are less likely to diverge in this manner than many people believe. But for another thing, isn't it pretty shocking for a campaign to be that pessimistic about its odds? If I were running for president, I'd want the people who work for me to be thinking "once the American people hear our message and learn the truth about our opponent, they're bound to swing to our side." You don't want your staff to be totally divorced from reality, but a little optimism never killed anyone.

Comments

"...a little optimism never killed anyone."

Well, besides that "greeted as liberators" thing

Posted by Jack | June 10, 2008 4:34 PM

Jack, you beat me to it.

Posted by Joe | June 10, 2008 4:36 PM

i'm pretty sure it killed Icarus too.

Posted by sean | June 10, 2008 4:37 PM

As Nate Silver at 538 has shown, the electoral college actually favors the Democrats.

Basically, it's because when the next census comes out, it'll give more electoral votes to the Sun Belt, Texas in particular, while taking away electoral votes from the northeast and rust belt.

In a 50/50 popular vote election, pick Obama. (Clinton appeared to have been even better at stealing a 49/51 election, but both of them start at an advantage.)

Posted by DivGuy | June 10, 2008 4:47 PM

You don't want your staff to be totally divorced from reality

If you're Republican it's required for your staff to be totally divorced from reality.

Ok, that's my joke. Anyway, I remember the late seventies very well and it was obvious to me that [a] liberalism was in decline and conservatism on the rise and that [b] most liberals didn't seem to realize this (on a personal note there was [c] I knew I wasn't going to enjoy the eventual conservative ascendance). The surprise is when the conservatives do, not when they don't. But we weren't living on Internet time then either.

Posted by Daddy Love | June 10, 2008 4:57 PM

What does it mean to "legitimately" believe that Obama will win 56% or more of the vote and lose the election? That is not a legitimate belief, because it's nuts. It might be the genuine belief of someone having hallucinations, but that's about it.

Posted by David in NY | June 10, 2008 4:58 PM

Nate's got that wrong. The Electoral College favors Republicans, since tiny Republican states outnumber tiny Democratic states. It's just lack of mid-decade Congressional reapportionment that favors Democrats.

Posted by phil | June 10, 2008 4:59 PM

Oh, never mind.

Posted by David in NY | June 10, 2008 5:02 PM

I believe that Nate has done several sims showing that Obama wins the election without the popular vote about 4.5% of the time; the corresponding figure is only 3% for McCain.

Posted by Joe | June 10, 2008 5:06 PM

Poblano's projections at FiveThirtyEight.com have Obama with twice as much chance of losing the popular vote and winning the electoral vote as McCain with the the possibility of either candidate winning an EV victory while losing the popular vote at 8 in 100.

It doesn't seem worth the time to discuss the wild scenarios when basic concepts of the vanilla concepts like the relative value of states remains largely unexamined. Ohio doesn't mean more Wisconsin and Minnesota in any scenario but good luck finding that out in common punditry.

Posted by joejoejoe | June 10, 2008 5:12 PM

Short version of McCain strategy: Don't worry, gang! Just look at the cards in this inside straight!

Posted by JMG | June 10, 2008 6:07 PM

Republicans win by ruthlessly lowering expectations, and they're off to a barn-burning start this year. Beware.

Posted by Mike | June 10, 2008 6:09 PM

What is fifteen points?

Posted by Brian | June 10, 2008 6:32 PM

Mike,

I agree. I don't understand the overconfidence that has taken over some quarters.

Posted by Micheline | June 10, 2008 6:38 PM

Mike,

I agree. I don't understand the overconfidence that has taken over some quarters.

Posted by Micheline | June 10, 2008 6:40 PM

Republicans win by ruthlessly lowering expectations.

Holy shit, when has this EVER been true? I'd like citations.

http://www.npr.org/about/press/061024_rove.html

I don't understand the overconfidence that has taken over some quarters.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/gop_stunned_by_loss_in_mississ.html

Landslide's a'comin.

[Which isn't to say you shouldn't work to make it happen--but if you do put in work, rest assure it will be rewarded. Handsomely.]

Posted by scythia | June 10, 2008 6:51 PM

If you assume as Josh Bolton said in 2006 that "the Dems will lose over Iran", it all makes perfect sense.

It doesn't matter what the polls say now. If an Iran war starts, and Obama can't differentiate himself from McCain on Iran (which he can't unless he does it NOW), and McCain gets a "war bounce", Obama loses.

And as I've said a hundred times here, NOT ONE Democrat has ever discussed this possibility. I think El Cid discussed it here with me at one point, IIRC. But not one Democrat nationally has discussed this.

And Matt can't talk about it at all.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 10, 2008 8:09 PM

I think they are trying to prevent a bandwagon effect caused by an extended series of bad polls, I guess by trying to assure people they have a plan for winning the election even if McCain loses the popular vote.

Posted by DTM | June 10, 2008 10:09 PM

It doesn't matter what the polls say now. If an Iran war starts, and Obama can't differentiate himself from McCain on Iran (which he can't unless he does it NOW), and McCain gets a "war bounce", Obama loses.

How on earth is John McCain going to get a "war bounce" from an unwinnable war that only 7% of the American people think is a good idea? Have any of you got a lead on someone who has realistically gamed out how an attack on Iran is going to work? Or is everyone assuming we will just bomb them once or twice and they will cry like babies and surrender?

The question that wasn't properly asked about Iraq, or Vietnam, or the Phillipines a hundred years ago: What are you going to do if they fight back? Unlike those fiascos and near fiascos from the past we don't have an army to fight the Iranians!

Petraeus has barely got enough troops in place to keep Iraq out of the headlines during the election campaign. What happens when the Iranians start infiltrating into Iraq big-time? Who do we have left to ship over there?

Posted by Berken | June 10, 2008 11:26 PM

What I keep thinking about (and I think the McCain people are too) is all those Appalachian votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Those folks wouldn't vote for Obama in the primaries, and they won't in the general either. That could be enough to give the EC to McCain, while Obama could still win the popular vote based on heavy Dem turnout in the blue states.

Posted by beckya57 | June 11, 2008 12:31 AM

The McCain campaign knows they are serious underdogs in this race. I would certainly rather my campaign staff realize that than be over-confident and believe victory is inevitable. As an example, had Hillary Clinton's campaign been that fatalistic by the summer of 2007 they may have ultimately won because they would have gone after Obama. I would counsel the Obama campaign to expect this to be as close an election as 2000 and 2004, and I suspect that is what they are planning for.

The expect Obama to open up a significant lead over McCain over the summer, perhaps even 10 points or greater. But McCain will battle back from that and come close, but ultimately fall short by a couple of points in the end. That's my current prediction. Not unlike the Carter-Ford race.

Posted by Tim K | June 11, 2008 12:39 AM

Berken: "How on earth is John McCain going to get a "war bounce" from an unwinnable war that only 7% of the American people think is a good idea?"

Because the American public will buy into it just long enough to give him that bounce. They always do.

You're absolutely correct that it's completely unwinnable and nobody - except Bush, Cheney, the neocons, and the Zionists - want it.

I'm with you on all that.

The reality is: if a war starts, McCain the "war hero" will support it and he will get a "war bounce" - as long as they time it such that the disaster it will become is not immediately apparent before election day.

My suspicion is that Bush will launch a minor strike on some alleged "insurgent camp" in Iran. Then if Iran retaliates, he will up the ante by attacking the Quds Force and possibly then up it further by attacking Iran's nuclear energy facilities.

Cheney ALREADY tried this last year, according to a recent report - and the Pentagon pushed back, requesting that a decision be made as to how far the US was prepared to go if the Iranians retaliated.

This year, Bush and Cheney have no downside to doing this because they're on the way out - and they can tie the hands of the incoming administration by starting the war by the end of the year. They can guarantee that their cronies' oil and war profiteering continue no matter who gets elected. Once started, it will be damn hard to stop.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 11, 2008 6:59 AM

A war with Iran qwould be a disatser and McCain would not get a bounce from it-- he would get clobbered. For that reason alone (assuming there are still a few adults left in the GOP power structure) there will be no war with Iran before the election. The real danger is after the election when Bush and his people will be free to do as they like for another ten weeks or so, and may not mind handing a war over to their successor whoever he is.

Posted by JonF | June 11, 2008 7:13 AM

beckya57,

A lot of those Appalachian Democrats were voting for Hillary Clinton because they actually liked the Clintons, as opposed to being crazy racists (yes, I know the news organizations found crazy racists to interview, but that doesn't mean their interviewees were representative). And there is no reason to believe that those Democrats will vote for McCain, seeing as how he isn't a Clinton.

Meanwhile, I strongly suspect Obama is going to do relatively well among moderate white suburbanites around the major cities in states such as PA and Ohio (who are often independents and moderate Republicans, and thus not well-represented in Democratic primaries). And that is why I think in the end he will win those states, even if a few racist Democrats refuse to vote for him.

Posted by DTM | June 11, 2008 7:25 AM

DTM:

Obama's problem with "moderate white suburbanite" voters around major cities is not that he's African American. His problem is he's the most (socially and culturally) liberal Democratic nominee since George McGovern. The Democratic party has always been on solid ground with these voters on most economic issues - with the important exception of the taxation issue. If the economy were the single issue in elections the Democrats would not have much trouble winning, and definitely would have won more than 3 of the last 10 presidential elections.

What trips the Democrats up with these voters at the presidential level are national security (foreign policy and defense) and cultural issues (abortion, gay rights, 2nd amendment, religion). The winning formula for the Democratic party over the past 30 years has been to nominate a candidate who can identify with and "speak the language" of rural America, appear moderate on the cultural issues, and also tough enough on national security. The very qualities that make some liberals call the Clintons "white trash" is part of why they have been so successful. It isn't about how much money somebody makes. It was talking relentlessly about the substantive economic and social issues confronting Americans in their everyday lives even while battling through a decade of sleaze and trumped up scandals cemented the Clintons' image as fighters.

Posted by Tim K | June 11, 2008 10:37 AM

Fine, JonF.

As Don Rickles would say, "What, that's better?"

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 11, 2008 4:55 PM

Tim K,

I honestly can't make any sense out of your post. At a minimum, you seem to be confusing moderate suburbanites with socially conservative rural voters.

But one bit of truth in your otherwise very confused post was that a major barrier to Democrats winning these voters has been national security issues. However, it turns out that many of these people really, really don't like the Iraq War. Indeed, that is a large part of the explanation for how the GOP got wiped out in 2006, and it helps to explain their declining party ID numbers. So, by not repeating their mistake of 2004 (meaning not picking someone who originally supported the war), the Democrats are in a very good position to pick up many of these disaffected suburban voters.

Posted by DTM | June 11, 2008 10:52 PM