Michigan No More
This is yesterday’s news, but I have to say that I was so surprised by the announcement that the McCain campaign is abandoning Michigan that I was initially inclined to believe it was some kind of fake-out. But it seems to be real enough. As a strategy, though, it’s a bit odd in my opinion. It’s true, of course, that currently McCain’s odds in Michigan are pretty long. But that reflects his currently poor national performance. Unless he does better overall, shifting resources around can’t save him. You have to ask about which states would be competitive if the national popular vote was about even and Michigan is a solid enough candidate. What’s more, it’s a state (unlike Colorado or Virginia or the 2nd Congressional District of Maine) with a history of tensions between a big city African-American political machine and the surrounding white majority — the sort of thing the McCain campaign could put to good use.
At any rate, Nate Silver has the provocative suggestion that McCain’s real problem is with his intertemporal resource allocation:
McCain’s problems ultimately stem back to the early summer, when his campaign decided to throw a ton of money into negative advertising rather than to build a robust field operation. That decision might have “worked” in the near term, as McCain chipped Obama’s lead down from about 5 points in mid-June to a virtual tie heading into the conventions. But, as with many McCain campaign decisions, it may have been one more engineered to win the battle rather than the war, as Obama’s position has bounced back with surprising vigor in the past two weeks, and the Britney Spears ads now seem like a distant and irrelevant memory.
Ultimately I don’t see much logic at all in investing heavily in early paid media. Until the conventions, gyrations in public opinion are basically meaningless and you might as well focus your time and energy on acquiring money and volunteers and building out your staff and field operations. The candidates can’t really control whether or not events in the real world set the stage for a close campaign in the fall, but they can control how well-prepared they are to win in the fall if the election turns out to be close.
50 Responses to “Michigan No More”
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October 3rd, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Well, early paid media can work if you can establish some sort of general narrative framework for the campaign. Didn’t something like that happen to Dukakis?
The problem with McCain’s negative advertising is that he didn’t bring the strategy off. He raised doubts about Obama, but he didn’t manage to define him. Obama may not play defense very well, but he’s proven to be a difficult target to pin down.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
To clarify, Obama’s much better when he personally ignores attacks rather than tries to respond to them. He’s better still when he’s on the attack himself, but this doesn’t seem to suit his temperament.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I heard Bruce Springsteen was going to play at an Obama rally at EMU in Michigan on Monday; I hope they don’t go and cancel it now.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
This is the end result of trying to win the daily media battle rather than trying to win the election.
Now, in fairness, in the early summer, my instinct is that McCain had to stay close in the polls or get abandoned by the party, which would have focused on Congressional races. The Republican base has never been in love with McCain, and so he had to stay close enough for them to invest in his campaign, and he did so with the negative attacks and the Palin choice.
But the opportunity costs have been significant.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
The early negative advertising may also end up being a net drain on the campaign to the extent that it pushed fence sitting Democrats more firmly into the Obama camp. Those people who gave their first donation to Obama after it became clear how negative the campaign was going to get may be giving additional donations today.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I think Matt forgets about the bandwagon effect. A candidate ahead during the summer finds it easier to raise money, to get the cooperation of local pols, and gets the votes from people with a psychological need to vote for a winner.
Clinton used lots of early paid media very effectively in 1996 to essentially bury the Dole campaign. Early negative advertising helped the Republicans take down Dukakis and Kerry. This is usually a tool available to the party already in power/
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
It seemed crazy to give up on Michigan to focus on Wisconsin and Minnesota, but then I figured maybe they think the polls are under-counting black voters and that Obama will get a surge out of Detroit that will make carrying Michigan nearly impossible for McCain.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Ditto what Curtis said. When the Democratic primaries were over, Obama had a 3-5 point lead. McCain (rightfully, I think) felt like he couldn’t wait for the Clinton Democrats consolidate from July through the convention. If he did, Obama would be up 12-15 going into the Republican convention — and that’s the type of deficit that causes the party to give up on the candidate and concentrate on salvaging 40+ Senate seats. The plan was to stay alive until the debates, hopefully fight to a draw, wait for an unexpected event that would favor McCain, and the it out on the ground on November 4 if that event never occurred.
And you know what? It nearly worked. If the unexpected event had been a terrorist bombing rather than the financial crisis then McCain would be up 5 by now. If there had been neither a terrorist bombing nor a financial crisis, then Obama would probably be up 1-3 — well within striking distance in next month’s election.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
My opinion all along has been that they spent money like they did early on in order to keep their poll numbers from falling through the floor to the point that they would be written off as a loosing campaign early on and the money they would need for later on would dry up. So the ads, in a manner of speaking, was aimed to keep the funders interested in funding the campaign. The one thing about my theory that gave me pause was how short sighted a plan like that would be and could his campaign really be that short sighted. Events since then have proven that they are nothing but short sighted.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
McCain’s Michigan bug-out also underscores Palin’s basic irrelevance to the election. If there is any state in the country outside of Alaska or the Rockies where her ‘you betcha’ schtick plays well, it’s blue collar Michigan. McCain banked on it, too — remember her first campaign stop the day after the convention was Macomb County.
But she’s no help, apparently, in going for Michigan’s 17 EVs. So what exactly is she good for? Shoring up Idaho? Giving Rich Lowry wood?
Bizarre.
Something tells me the McCain campaign is kind of making it up as they go along.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I think Matt is also forgetting his earlier contention that McCain can’t afford to pursue a conservative campaign strategy because the odds are against him. Only by taking some big risks does he have a shot at winning in such a negative environment for Republicans. The Rev. Wright thing could have turned into a big deal and lead to internal Dem disarray because Hilary was still alive at the time. I think McCain gambled and lost but investing in a large ground game and other things that help only at the margins would have been a guaranteed loser. In this sense, his “maverickness” probably predisposes him well.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Making ads and selling them puts more money into the hands of the people running the campaign. Why spread all that money around to people on the ground in flyover country where it will just disappear. Instead you bill the campaign 10% or whatever it is for ads. Then you just sit at your desk and rake it in. No fuss, no muss, no organizational issues, people problems, thousands of bills to pay, work work work. Screw that. Make up some crude propaganda, sell it to grateful media outlets and try to decide between a Mercedes or a Lexus.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
For some time now, McCain has been running attack ads in the very expensive NYC Metro area on the NBC Nightly News. How sensible has that been?
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
may i just note that in one of matthew’s weakest moments in his years as a blogger, he was insisting (back when that terrible mrs. clinton had the frickin’ nerve not to accept coronation for barack obama – in matthew’s estimation) that if only that horrible hillary would get out of the race, barack obama could run lots of effective negative ads aimed at mccain?
in may?
so i would say that matthew’s “logic” on this matter is of relatively recent vintage, although since his “logic” is now correct (at the time i pointed out that it was frickin’ may) i don’t want to press it too much further.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Well, clearly it’s a mistake to commit *any* amount of time or money to Wisconsin. Didn’t we learn this spring that “Whatsoever state which weareth any part of Michigan as a hat, counteth not?”
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Am I wrong in seeing a similarity in Silver’s assessment of McCain’s Michigan efforts and Goldenberg bit on hedging against China’s military power that Matt cited yesterday?
Obama’s robust ground game parallels China’s economic build up paying dividends in the long term while McCain’s early negative adds parallel America’s large military investments having short term benefits.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
# howard Says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
may i just note that in one of matthew’s weakest moments in his years as a blogger, he was insisting (back when that terrible mrs. clinton had the frickin’ nerve not to accept coronation for barack obama – in matthew’s estimation) that if only that horrible hillary would get out of the race, barack obama could run lots of effective negative ads aimed at mccain? in may?
Do you think that Obama and McCain had equal resources in May, or do you think that a huge resource advantage does not affect the viability of tactics and strategies that a cash starved campaign cannot risk? Which is it?
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
McCain seemed so intent on making a play for Michigan, before and after the convention he spent a ton of time there, yet he did not pick Romney, with all his name recognition there, as his running mate. Very confusing! But that seems to be the way his campaign is being run. Very confusing.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
i don’t know, senor yglesias. i think i agree with howard on this. my recollection is that most obama-supporters were hysterical about the fact that obama wasn’t getting the opportunity to “define” mccain early. i don’t recall how intense matt was on this score, but his buddy ezra was livid.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
“But, as with many McCain campaign decisions, it may have been one more engineered to win the battle rather than the war” –
So that’s what McCain meant by knowing the difference between strategy and tactics!
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Matt,
The point you make really defines the absurdity of McCain’s comment during the first debate that Obama doesn’t understand the difference between strategy and tactics.
It’s been pretty clear from the start of the primaries that Obama is a master of not only the devising of a strategy but of its implementation too. There was much gnashing of teeth when Hillary looked like making a comeback in the primary race but the Obama campaign knew all along that its strategy would win the day.
McCain, of course, has been the complete opposite, throwing money around to make short tactical yet unsustainable gains. The biggest, of course, after Obama’s excellent Convention speech, was to pick Palin to deflate the balloon and give himself a short-term boost.
Again, it looks like Obama’s strategy of putting the ground game in place first looks wise, and we haven’t even seen the results yet.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Hey, remember when the die-hard Hillaryites insisted that refusing to fully count the delgates from the bogus Michigan primary would cause all Dems there to feel disrespected and cost them the state?
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Sad news for Davy Broder of Beaver Island, Michigan.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I never did credit that Michigan, with its awful economy and a solid record of voting for Democrats would go for McCain.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Perhaps I’m a wee bit cynical, but maybe some other alternative strategy is at play here. Perhaps Mr. McCain and his cohorts will seek legal means to disqualify the vote in Michigan?
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Well, of course–there’s no way Barack Obama could compete in Michigan after carrying out his evil nefarious plot to disenfranchise their primary voters. Only Hillary could possibly have won Michigan.
Oh, wait–McCain is pulling out? Never mind.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
what Joe says above is spot on — McCain’s strategy was better than Obama’s strategy, but this is a really, really hard race to win for McCain. Despite being weighed down by President 28%, McCain was at least even with Obama until the Wall Street meltdown.
Not only that, but what started to cut into McCain’s lead before the Wall Street crisis was Obama’s post convention negative ads that sought to define McCain.
Remember, Obama spent MORE money in August than McCain, and he spent it on those terrible, messageless potato ads during the Olympics.
Anyone who is comparing ground games is full of shit — we still don’t know who has the better ground game. There as lots of talk in 2004 about Kerry’s ground game and the union support, but Bush-Rove outhustled them.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
McCain had to spend that money before the convention. He was committed to public financing in the general and had money to burn in the pre-convention period. This spending was, essentially, cost-free with potential benefits that included staying competitive as well as fees for the consultants. There was no temporal allocation decision, money could not be forwarded from early August to October, unless I misunderstand public financing.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
First, McCain is facing a problem (how to allocate his resources in a way that will lead him to beat Obama) that simply does not have a solution that is likely to work (meaning there is no such allocation that would make it more likely than not that he would beat Obama). So merely showing that any particular strategy he has tried was unlikely to work doesn’t show it wasn’t the best strategy available anyway.
Second, as I recall the conventional wisdom is that early paid media can sometimes be used by an incumbent or quasi-incumbent to define and then bury beyond recovery a weak challenger (hence examples like Dukakis, Dole, and Kerry). Now obviously that sometimes doesn’t work, and here it was predictable it wouldn’t work because the incumbent party is so unpopular and Obama is not a weak challenger. But see my first point.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
If you can successfully brand your opponent early, then a lot of other things fall into place.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
bob h is right. McCain’s been doing a lot of media buys in New York. Apparently he’s hitting all the evening news shows, plus the Sunday news shows and Nightline.
It’s not rational in terms of trying to win votes. I wonder if he’s trying to help his fundraising operations, which presumably pull in a fair amount of money from NYC.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
i dont trust mccain and the gop.
i think theyll still aim at michigan towards the last week of october. the rnc will bombard every midwest state with negative ads. jsut wait for it.
dont fall for any of mccain’s traps.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 pm
You have to wonder how much enthusiasm he would have encountered trying to build up a ground game like Obama’s before he picked Palin. I think it’s fair to say he wouldn’t have nearly as much of the evangelical apparatus working for him as Bush did, so even if he wanted to, I’m not sure he could have found enough people to work or volunteer for him before he picked Palin as he has after he picked Palin.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:47 am
You see that half gnawed on chicken leg that the mitten is reaching for? Up there on that map? The UP up there above the lower P? The part that’s contiguous with the great state of Wisconsin? That should (and mark my word, that will) be ours.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:01 am
The US economy sucks. The Michigan auto economy sucks even worse than the rest of the US. McCain and the GOP have NOTHING to offer all the unemployed workers. They even vote down unemployment benefit extensions. Word is that McCain needs to put resources in to hold Indiana.
As for the ground game, in Indiana, it is all Obama. Obama used a ground game in the primary to tie Clinton. In the general election, it was a matter of keeping the trained volunteers and infusing them with new workers. McCain has a mere shell in comparison. A good ground game takes committed volunteers. Until Palin was on the GOP ticket, there was near zero enthusiasm for McCain.
October 4th, 2008 at 4:56 am
i think theyll still aim at michigan towards the last week of october.
They might: Michigan doesn’t allow no-excuse in-person voting, so the last week will matter. But that plays both ways: if a winter storm hits Michigan on November 4th, and there’s no GOTV, that might keep McCain’s best demographic (i.e. the old) at home, and you can’t create a ground team out of thin air.
Furthermore, if he’s having to shore up the vote in Florida and NC — remember that Plouffe marked out $39m for Florida alone, and Obama’s prepping this weekend in the one bit of NC he’s yet to visit — he might not have the money to saturate the Michigan airwaves.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Well, Matt, considering the guy who came up with this plan is the same guy (Mike Duhaime) who came up with the disasterous rudy plan to hunker down in Florida, are you surprised? And the McCain campaign says its gonna spend millions for that one vote in Maine as per the same duhaime. I think he’s an undercover dem. operative. What’s with McCain believing in this guy after the rudy meltdown, I don’t know.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:13 am
How does the announcement that McCain is leaving make sense?
Could it be a tactic to put in play just before the veep debates, waiting for the feisty and folksy and Biden-challenging Palin to come back and beg the Boss to let her take her big hunting guns back to Michigan and wipe out the effete Democrats?
And maybe Detroit, too?
October 4th, 2008 at 11:47 am
How many ex-felons are registered to vote in Michigan?
Here’s a story on Obama’s base of support in Virginia:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081004/ap_on_el_pr/felons_voting;_ylt=AuIex4Q.IBQu1kBbiiFOrJKs0NUE
October 4th, 2008 at 11:48 am
At a certain point, it becomes less about winning, and more about not being embarrassed.
At a certain point, it becomes less about winning and more about making sure that your party doesn’t implode.
I think we’re at that point for the McCain campaign, honestly.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I think McCain’s campaign is now being run by the RNC. Michigan has no competitive Congressional races, whereas Minnesota does.
As for Summer ad spending, it can be effective. But you cannot spend all summer on a strategy, “experience counts,” that you then undercut in September (picking the most unknowledgable VP in history).
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