Sep 4th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Changing the Map
Marc Ambinder reports “McCain Campaign Sees Changed Map With Palin Pick.” Read the item, though, and you’ll that the map they see involves Palin . . . going to conservative parts of the country and speaking to right-wing interest groups. That’s nice, I guess, but this seems like an incredibly inauspicious year for Republicans trying to win with a base mobilization strategy. There’s no question that people who are very committed to extreme cultural conservatism and don’t otherwise care about governing — i.e., the conservative base — like Palin a lot. But normally “good news” for your ticket consists of people who might not vote for you coming around to your point of view, not just to your fans clapping louder.
56 Responses to “Changing the Map”
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Yup – from an electoral map perspective, the Palin pick doesn’t have incredibly compelling logic. Although I’m curious if her persona plays particularly well in western swing states lik Colorado, Montana, and Nevada?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am
One of her first appearances will be in Tampa, and of course Florida is a crucial swing state.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Maybe McCain senses a certain diffidence, so he’s sending her to “easy” venues first. She can cut a popular profile in the press, gain confidence, and then start on the swing states.
I hope Biden responds to her speech … Obama will have a chance tonight on Bill O’Reilly. But its Biden who needs to watch Obama’s back, even at a certain cost to himself.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I wouldn’t disparage this base-mobilizing strategy. We know that the conservative base would not vote for Obama, but we didn’t know whether they would turn out to vote for McCain.
The Sarah Palin pick is all about turnout and closing the enthusiasm gap. I would say this doesn’t change McCain’s poll numbers for likely voters, but it might increase his poll numbers among registered voters.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:38 am
In 2004, the base in Ohio was mobilized by an anti gay marriage amendment. The independents by the war.
Will the independents react well to Palin? I don’t see it but I’m already biased against the ticket.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’m hoping Sen. Clinton comes out strong. She needs to find one clear meme and keep hitting it.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Seems like the Palin gambit has shifted the ground to a country party vs city party scenario. And rural electoral votes count more. It’s just a TAD scary, innit?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am
There’s a way in which this pick could hurt McCain with the base that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
If you’re a Republican who loves Palin and doesn’t like McCain, you know that if McCain loses this fall then it’s very likely Palin will be the nominee in 2012.
That isn’t incentive to get out and vote for McCain in November, is it?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am
The ground has shifted. The numbers are no longer there for a base strategy to get them anything but a somewhat respectable defeat. And they’re inconsistent to the point of flailing- one day putting Holy Joe on to praise by partisanship, the next wheeling out the pit bull with lipstick. So which one of those is the message?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Seems like the Palin gambit returns us to the familiar soil of country party vs. city party. And rural electoral votes count for more. It’s just a TAD scary, innit?
Plus, the vague notion that we may, one way or another, be facing down this pitbull with lipstick in sundry electoral battles to come after this season. Pass the Tylenol….
September 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Huh. That’s a first–sorry for the double posting (but with extra added bonus!): the first one lagged by minutes….
September 4th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Who said change is easy. Thankfully Obama has offices in rural areas. If I were Obama , I would go into those rural areas or send Bill Clinton to campaign those areas because during the primary he was very effective. For people who have not signed to up volunteer in the Obama campaign. The more volunteers we have the stronger we will be in November. Please also donate.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:55 am
It’s important to keep Palin in context, that context being that Wasilla has a meth lab for about every 100 residents. I think that explains a lot.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Palin in Florida? Great, she can help with the Jews for Buchanan/Jesus voters.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Peter Says:
One of her first appearances will be in Tampa, and of course Florida is a crucial swing state.
It will be interesting to see how Florida plays out. McCain had real potential to pull the Jewish vote in Florida, especially with Lieberman at his side, but Palin may completely kill that, once her associations with various anti-semites of differing stripes comes out.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I’m not sure she can pull off the family values thing and mobilize the base for very long. Too Coulterish.
I’m thinking she’ll instead go back to her old bangs mobilization strategy.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Who was that speech supposed to sway, and how? The message was Republicans are meaner and more sarcastic than anyone else, but who does that appeal to? There’s a reason why more people (lamentably) watch Leno than Letterman: most folks don’t like sarcasm!
September 4th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Indeed, it worked for John Edwards! And Joe Lieberman! And Jack Kemp! And Lloyd Bentsen! And Geraldine Ferraro! And Sargent Shriver! And Ed Muskie!
In the last one hundred years, only two unsuccessful vice presidential candidates have won a major party presidential nomination: Franklin Roosevelt and Bob Dole. FDR won his presidential nomination twelve years after his VP nomination, Dole twenty years later. On what possible grounds would a losing Palin be anything but a joke?
September 4th, 2008 at 10:16 am
It must be a strange feeling for McCain to be rendered irrelevant by his choice of Palin. He’s conceded that he couldn’t win by himself, and the use of Palin to denigrate Obama’s experience also applies to himself. According to the logic of their rhetoric, Palin should be at the head of the ticket. That also applies to the emotional attachment of the party to the candidate. McCain has made himself a burden to the success of the ticket.
What a world. What a world.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Are there any documentary film makers riding along on this tour? Both internally approved and external to the campaign. A fly-on-the-wall POV will make for compelling viewing, like Night at the Opera or Day at the Races.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:33 am
September 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Okay, trying again. From a DKos diarist, looking at the bizarre spectacle of the ruling party demanding to be put back in so that they can lead the charge for change they haven’t done in the past 7.5 years:
September 4th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I’m not sure you could make the argument that a party whose signature policy-related chant is “drill baby drill” is a party of people who think about long-term consequences.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:37 am
More game changing rhetoric:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZihQ7X9rzlM
It’s going to be a wild ride… yeeeeehaaaawww
September 4th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Does Gaw-odd need a plan? All-knowing and all…
September 4th, 2008 at 10:53 am
There’s also Mondale, though that doesn’t help the argument.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I wonder whether McCain is counting on a strong base plus latent racism in the electorate at large to squeak him through. A “Bradley Effect.” See this sobering piece in the NY Review of Books. Andrew Hacker is one of the foremost scholars on the statistics of race relations.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21771
September 4th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Isn’t McCain’s strategy, first, to nail down and energize the base with Palin and, then, to pivot to the center and make a play for independents, white voters who are reluctant to pull the lever for a black man, and Jewish voters in Florida?
September 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Matt: Base-mobilization is the only strategy McCain has! He twiddled is thumbs for several months of the end of the primary season instead of raising money and enthusiasm and getting his own ground game going. Months of inaction have led to a point where he has to embrace churches, give them a VP pick that suits their interests, and send her to every Colorado Springs and Orange County, FL in the country to whip up support.
Had he run a better campaign in the interim and built on his independent brand, he wouldn’t have had to jolt right in the past month to have a chance. He wouldn’t have had to change his position on affirmative action, he could’ve picked a pro-choice VP (almost every other good woman choice was pro-choice), etc, etc, etc.
If McCain had any sort of ground game in the absence of the religious right, he would’ve been in a much more flexible position leading up to the convention and he would be in a much better position today.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
If McCain had any sort of ground game in the absence of the religious right, he would’ve been in a much more flexible position leading up to the convention and he would be in a much better position today.
If McCain hadn’t catered to the right, the ticket would have been headed by Huckabee.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
It makes sense if your entire convention has been pitched to the 20% of this country who is behind Bush and thinks the country is on the right track. It’s almost comical to watch this convention and see them thinking, truly believing, that spouting off far right buzzwords, tax claptrap, flogging a biography, and not talking about any of the issues facing Americans is really working. They think the country is exactly like the delegates that are hooting and hollering over the death tax.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
September 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Look at all the Hillary and Geraldine references in her rollout, now dropped. They were aiming to do okay with the base while powerfully appealing to independents and Hillary Dems. Instead they hit a home run with the social conservatives and drove everyone else away. So they’re working with what they got, ergo closed sessions with the conservative faithful who will be fired up by a red meat Palin speech. (If McCain had seriously floated her and 2 or 3 others months ago, then they could have seen how this worked in practice. It’s not like they can say mid-convention “Woop, trading Palin out and Pawlenty in. How’s that?”)
Last Friday I thought Palin might appeal to mountain state libertarian types, and flipping purple western states blue is part of the Dem strategy this year. She had the potential to shake that up, but I’m not hearing anything more about it. No longer live out there. For what it’s worth, she’s being presented as Hockey Mom. They aren’t even attempting “Here’s how her getting big oil to cut even larger checks for Alaska residents will parlay into actual energy/economic policy for residents of Montana and Colorado.” Independents have been turned off–in part by the complete reliance on “she has 5 kids; also, she’s a mother” over any policy–and the campaign’s decision to keep her well away from the nasty nasty media and their questions will only play into that. If the tilters in the western states are similar to other independents, that western play is no longer a top issue.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I hear the Tampa appearance is already cancelled; either they aren’t ready to let her out yet or they need to straighten out her problems with the jews, which Wexler already has brought out. We need to see the Clintons a lot in Florida!
September 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
This post feels good to me as a liberal. But MY should remember than the social conservative base in the white conservative churches is the organizational backbone of the GOP. That sructure would have been dead with a McCain-Lieberman ticket. Now its going to get revved up, possibly as much as it was in 2004. The conservative base, if whipped up by a Bush or Palin figure, punches well above its weight.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
But Matt, isn’t that exactly the point? The “base” had questionable zeal to get off their butts in November for McCain. Not so much now. And significantly less so once she starts making the rounds.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Then again, even though the base now loves Palin, how excited do people really get about voting for VP? I mean, at best she can be President in 8 years, fewer if McCain dies. It almost creates the incentives for anti-McCain, pro-Palin conservatives to hope something happens to McCain (not saying people will actually feel that, but there are moral hazards perverting voter incentives here for conservative voters).
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