2008 Election CoverUps

AMAZING BUT TRUE: '08 ELECTION STILL A RACE

July 2008

Senator McCain should by all rights be 15 to 20 points down in the polls by now. but he isn't. why is that?

By Andrew Peterson
For CoverUps.com

Linda Chavez, writing in the New York Post, tells us that by every conventional political yard-stick, the presidential campaign of John McCain should be dead in the water.

Americans overwhelmingly believe the country is on the wrong track. They can't stand President Bush. The economy is weak and shows little sign of getting stronger before the election. The country is fighting an unpopular war. And Obama, as he reminds us every time he opens his mouth, is all about "change."

Yet the polls show us a tight and tightening race.

Most national polls show him ahead - but by margins so thin it can hardly give comfort to the putative front-runner. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters puts Obama up only six points overall, while the more reliable polls of likely voters put it at a statistical tie within the margin of error.

Particularly telling is the tidal shift in the battleground states.

A new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters found Obama losing eight points over a month earlier in Minnesota, dropping five points in Colorado and two points in both Michigan and Wisconsin.

John McCain has pulled ahead of him in Colorado, is within the margin of error in Minnesota, and is in striking distance in Michigan. Only in Wisconsin is Obama comfortably ahead (11 points).

Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East, intended to convince skeptical American voters of his foreign policy bona fides, may turn out to be a political pratfall akin to Michael Dukakis's tank ride in 1988.

And then there were the pictures of Obama addressing throngs of more than 200,000 adoring Germans - who, judging from the applause differentials when he mentioned his parents' disparate backgrounds, were far more enthusiastic about Obama's African than his American heritage.

Yet, average Americans aren't yet convinced Obama's "change" is what they need...

Obama's decision to leave America this week in order to burnish his credentials was supposed to fix these problems, but it could backfire.

Our Take

Obama is free to go anywhere in the world he wants – but if he wants to convince American voters that he'll represent American interests on the world stage, there are better ways to do it than standing up in front of 200,000 Germans and calling yourself a citizen of the world.

Obama is so severely deficient in the foreign policy department, it's hard to see him convincing American voters that he's got the leadership goods. Maybe the best advice for him is the kind of advice we'd give to someone stuck in a deep hole who wants out: stop digging.

Link to article.