Dick Morris: Obama has the upper hand, but McCain can still win

[Justin]

Dick Morris: Obama has the upper hand, but McCain can still win
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2008/...till-take-him/

Published in The Washington Post on May 18, 2008.

John McCain is America’s favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support.

But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are destined to win the White House. But I don’t do political science; I do politics, and I’m convinced that McCain can still win — if he’s willing to follow the road map below.

McCain needs to not run as a traditional Republican, which is easy, since he’s not one. After all, how did an anti-torture, anti-tobacco, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-pork, pro-alternative-energy Republican ever emerge from the primaries alive? Simple: The GOP electorate, along with the rest of the country, has moved somewhat to the left. (In Florida, for example, exit polls showed that only 27 percent of Republican primary voters described themselves as “very conservative,” while 28 percent said they were “moderate” and 2 percent said they were “very liberal.”)

Meanwhile, McCain’s likely rival, Barack Obama, has raised such doubts among voters that their concerns momentarily energized even Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sagging campaign. With the help of the incendiary comments of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama’s negatives have been rising even as he nears the finish line.

Still, voters are tending heavily toward the Democratic Party. Normally, party preferences are about even, but recent national polls give Democrats a decided edge. In last week’s Post-ABC poll, 53 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats or leaned toward the party, compared with 39 percent who were Republicans or tilted to the GOP.

To sum it up: A candidate who cannot get elected is being nominated by a party that cannot be defeated, while a candidate who is eminently electable is running as the nominee of a party doomed to defeat.

In this environment, McCain can win by running to the center.

His base will be there for him; indeed, it will turn out in massive numbers. Wright has become the honorary chairman of McCain’s get-out-the-vote efforts. It would be nice to think that race isn’t a factor in American politics anymore, but it is. The growing fear of Obama, who remains something of an unknown, will drag every last white Republican male off the golf course to vote for McCain, and he will need no further laying-on of hands from either evangelical Christians or fiscal conservatives.

So McCain doesn’t have to spend a lot of time wooing his base. What he does need to do is reduce the size of the synapse over which independents and fearful Democrats need to pass in order to back his candidacy. If the synapse is wide, they will stay with Obama. But if they perceive McCain as an acceptable alternative, there is every chance that they will cross over to back him in November.

If the GOP nominee were Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, independents and Democrats might not vote Republican even if they became convinced that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy. Even Rudy Giuliani, with his penchant for confrontation, might have elicited sufficient doubts among Democrats to hold them in line for Obama. But McCain doesn’t threaten anyone. Everyone can appreciate the ordeal that tested his courage in Vietnam, and independents and Democrats can celebrate much of his legislative record. Voting for McCain is an easy sell.
Except, of course, for Iraq. This is his biggest problem — the one issue that impales the Arizona senator and hampers his ability to induce liberals to cross the line.

Earlier in the race, Iraq might have been a deal-breaker. But a kinder, gentler war has emerged. U.S. combat deaths are way down, and the de facto U.S. alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province against al-Qaeda in Iraq seems to have dramatically improved the security situation. Still, most Americans don’t like the war, and McCain must deal with their opposition if he wants to win.

The solution is to draw Obama out — to ask the untested senator what he would do if al-Qaeda in Iraq took over the country . . . or if Iran did . . . or if the Iraqis who backed the U.S. mission were being slaughtered by the thousands . . . or if Islamist terrorists seized control of the country’s oil wealth.
Obama, not wanting to appear weak, would no doubt rise to the bait and agree that he might need to send troops back in under certain conditions. He would assure us that sufficient forces would be available at nearby bases to get the job done. To avoid coming across as indecisive and timid, he would put on a sufficiently hawkish face to reassure the voters. And in doing so, he would blur the war issue vis-a-vis McCain. It will make little difference to most Americans whether our troops are in Iraq (as McCain wants) or in Kuwait (as Obama can be pushed to suggest), so long as U.S. casualties are dropping. And with the economy in tough shape, Iraq will fade as the election’s be-all and end-all issue.

Which brings us to George W. Bush, the least popular president of modern times. Unlikely as it sounds, the soon-to-be former president needs to get out of the White House, reenter the political arena (much as it will pain him) and go around the country telling us two things: First, we are winning in Iraq; second, the economy is not as bad as most people think. With the Dow at around 12,800 and unemployment at 5 percent, Bush can make a good case that things aren’t really headed for the rocks. And he’ll have to. Republicans cannot win with an incumbent president with rock-bottom ratings.

Bush can help McCain, but that doesn’t mean that McCain should support Bush. As Bush makes the case for himself, McCain must put distance between them. A lot of distance. Once, McCain ran against Bush. But since then, he has basked in the glow of Bush’s warm welcome back to the mainstream of the party. Now McCain needs to free himself of Bush’s spell, go out again into the cold and show the country the difference between his agenda and Bush’s.

Meanwhile, McCain should highlight his credentials as a reformer and a maverick to attract Democrats and independents who worry about Obama. Forget about the base. It will be there. Obama’s liberalism, his pro-tax agenda and his proposed weakening of the USA Patriot Act — as well as fears that he would appoint to office people such as Rev. Wright and William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground — will all assure the full mobilization of the right. Immigration reform and McCain’s other acts of apostasy will be forgiven for the sake of beating Obama. So McCain needs to go after the swing voters:

Lash out at the corporate greed that landed us in the subprime mortgage crisis. Attack the golden-parachute pensions, the ill-gotten commissions and the maddening lending fees.

Go after credit card companies’ interest rates, late fees and consumer gouging.

Demand action on global warming (as McCain began doing last week, including hawking “eco-friendly” campaign T-shirts).

Call for a ban on all congressional earmarks, with their inevitable waste and pork, and insist that Congress appoint a permanent ethics special prosecutor to police itself.

Attack big tobacco, and blast the movie industry for helping sell its poison.

Pledge to make hedge-fund managers pay full earned-income taxes on their incomes, rather than the undeserved capital-gains treatment they currently get.

But not all of McCain’s moves should be aimed at pleasing the left. He should also:

Attack Obama for favoring federally subsidized health insurance for illegal immigrants.

Criticize Obama for slavish devotion to the teachers’ unions and willingness to compromise educational standards.

Go after the Democrats for their proposals to lower sentences for crack cocaine to make them equal to those for powder cocaine. (Instead, McCain should urge raising penalties for regular cocaine.)

McCain need not depart from long-held principles to wage any of these battles. He has always embraced these causes as a senator, and he needs to do so ever more forcefully as a candidate for president. The danger for McCain is that he will forget that he has already won the Republican nomination and retreat to safe GOP positions, which will alienate precisely the Democrats and independents whom he is uniquely positioned to attract.

Meanwhile, the right wing will carry the attack against Obama. McCain is not a mudslinging politician by nature, but he doesn’t need to be. The collected quotes of Rev. Wright will be a bestseller this summer. Obama once had to prove to us that he was not a Muslim; now he must convince us that he never really went to church much. Just as Sen. John F. Kerry was buffeted by veterans who had less than heroic memories of their service with him in Vietnam, so Obama will have to weather the recollections of his fellow parishioners. Count on several to surface and claim that they sat next to him during some particularly incendiary sermon.

The American public will not ultimately doubt Obama’s patriotism; that is a bridge too far. But we will come to think less of his credibility and strength as he fumbles his way through awkward denials. Obama’s ex-pastor may have faded in the primary fight with Clinton, but Wright will loom larger in the general election. McCain is in an excellent position to exploit the openings that Obama will offer — if, and only if, he moves to the center.

[Justin]

Interesting take, but I think there is one serious flaw in Morris' reasoning: Wright. I don't think it scared away as many Independents and Democrats as Morris thinks, and I don't think it lit up the Republican base as much as Morris thinks. I think Republican turn-out will be very low as-is. If McCain moves to the left, I think the number of independents he will gain will not outnumber the number of Republicans he will lose.

[Underhill]

What will light up the right is the gay marriage issue. California handed McCain and winner there.

[ninjalooter1701]

With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure

I thought that a tenure in the Senate left you weak in foreign policy. Now, he's "distinctive?" Other than the gray hair?

But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track.

Don't forget, of course, McCain's policy of "Stay the Course," which is bound to resonate with the above quoted statements.

McCain needs to not run as a traditional Republican, which is easy, since he’s not one. After all, how did an anti-torture, anti-tobacco, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-pork, pro-alternative-energy Republican ever emerge from the primaries alive? Simple

Karl Rove wasn't present this time to remind us of John McCain's black baby.

In this environment, McCain can win by running to the center.

How brilliant! Oh wait, that's what's done in every election.

So McCain doesn’t have to spend a lot of time wooing his base. What he does need to do is reduce the size of the synapse

The one synapse that their brain has.

Earlier in the race, Iraq might have been a deal-breaker. But a kinder, gentler war has emerged. U.S. combat deaths are way down, and the de facto U.S. alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province against al-Qaeda in Iraq seems to have dramatically improved the security situation.

I love kool-aid.

he solution is to draw Obama out — to ask the untested senator what he would do if al-Qaeda in Iraq took over the country . . . or if Iran did . . . or if the Iraqis who backed the U.S. mission were being slaughtered by the thousands . . . or if Islamist terrorists seized control of the country’s oil wealth.

Oooh, straw man argumentation...

Unlikely as it sounds, the soon-to-be former president needs to get out of the White House, reenter the political arena (much as it will pain him) and go around the country telling us two things: First, we are winning in Iraq; second, the economy is not as bad as most people think.

He's already doing that.

Attack big tobacco, and blast the movie industry for helping sell its poison.

Pledge to make hedge-fund managers pay full earned-income taxes on their incomes, rather than the undeserved capital-gains treatment they currently get.

But not all of McCain’s moves should be aimed at pleasing the left. He should also:

Attack Obama for favoring federally subsidized health insurance for illegal immigrants.

Criticize Obama for slavish devotion to the teachers’ unions and willingness to compromise educational standards.

Go after the Democrats for their proposals to lower sentences for crack cocaine to make them equal to those for powder cocaine. (Instead, McCain should urge raising penalties for regular cocaine.)

And then Dick Morris really puts his foot in his mouth.

[Washington]

Of course both candidates are going to fight for the centre ground because both candidates have huge appeal to independents. By and large, though, I think that independents will be split fairly evenly between the two candidates (barring any extreme scandal for either candidate). Where Obama will win the election, though, is that he won't have to work as hard to get out his core voters.

John McCain only has the begrudging support of much of his party and, as such, may struggle to get the vote out amongst the conservative base which has been so effective in recent elections. On top of this, I'm not so sure if certain Republicans haven't begun to think a loss inevitable. There would be advantages for them in losing the Presidency and "going back to the drawing board". They still have some popular policies but they are in danger with dreadfully losing touch with the people they represent. John McCain could have gone a long way to rectifiying this problem if only his party had realised that it was a good thing and thrown their support behind him. As it turns out, the Republicans have stolen a trick from the Democrats and dropped the ball in election year.

Obama, on the other hand, has managed to gain the fervent support of much of his base, as well as getting young voters excited about, and involved in, Politics. These are two groups that will need no encouragement to "get active" come November and from here will come Obama's margin of victory. One must also take into account the fact that well over 1 million people have donated to Obama's campaign and they will, presumably, want a decent return on their investment.

There are many factors that could still change this race, and to assume that Obama has the Presidency sown up before he even has his party's nomination would be foolish at best. Nonetheless, I believe that the odds are stacked heavily in his favour right about now. Were he to take Hillary onto the ticket he would sure up the Presidency but I am quite sure that he does not want to and so this race is still alive, albeit not quite as much as Dick Morris tells us.

[Underhill]

Originally Posted by Washington

Were he to take Hillary onto the ticket he would sure up the Presidency but I am quite sure that he does not want to and so this race is still alive, albeit not quite as much as Dick Morris tells us.

Up to this last line I think you were right on the money. I used to think that way. But I think putting Hillary on the ticket would be a poor move. She is looking like a sore loser now and I think any bump having her on the ticket could give would be more than offset by the resentment many people feel towards her.

Her willingness to compromise on anything to get herself on the ticket (see the gas holiday for an example) has me thinking I don't want her even close to the white house.

[Justin]

Of course both candidates are going to fight for the centre ground because both candidates have huge appeal to independents. By and large, though, I think that independents will be split fairly evenly between the two candidates (barring any extreme scandal for either candidate). Where Obama will win the election, though, is that he won't have to work as hard to get out his core voters.

John McCain only has the begrudging support of much of his party and, as such, may struggle to get the vote out amongst the conservative base which has been so effective in recent elections. On top of this, I'm not so sure if certain Republicans haven't begun to think a loss inevitable. There would be advantages for them in losing the Presidency and "going back to the drawing board". They still have some popular policies but they are in danger with dreadfully losing touch with the people they represent. John McCain could have gone a long way to rectifiying this problem if only his party had realised that it was a good thing and thrown their support behind him. As it turns out, the Republicans have stolen a trick from the Democrats and dropped the ball in election year.

Obama, on the other hand, has managed to gain the fervent support of much of his base, as well as getting young voters excited about, and involved in, Politics. These are two groups that will need no encouragement to "get active" come November and from here will come Obama's margin of victory. One must also take into account the fact that well over 1 million people have donated to Obama's campaign and they will, presumably, want a decent return on their investment.

There are many factors that could still change this race, and to assume that Obama has the Presidency sown up before he even has his party's nomination would be foolish at best. Nonetheless, I believe that the odds are stacked heavily in his favour right about now. Were he to take Hillary onto the ticket he would sure up the Presidency but I am quite sure that he does not want to and so this race is still alive, albeit not quite as much as Dick Morris tells us.

Excellent post, Washington...though I disagree with you regarding Hillary.

I hope you stick around!

[Washington]

Originally Posted by Underhill

Up to this last line I think you were right on the money. I used to think that way. But I think putting Hillary on the ticket would be a poor move. She is looking like a sore loser now and I think any bump having her on the ticket could give would be more than offset by the resentment many people feel towards her.

Her willingness to compromise on anything to get herself on the ticket (see the gas holiday for an example) has me thinking I don't want her even close to the white house.

I think that could be said for either candidate. Obama is a brilliant mind but on certain issues he needs to move away from populist tendencies, which have come to characterise Democratic Presidential candidates in recent years, and be a leader. People might not always want to hear bad news but they need to. A candidate such as Obama is popular enough without needed to tailor his polics too much. Hillary, on the other hand, does need to use populism to win votes and this is probably why she supported the gas holiday and he didn't.

As far as the ticket is concerned, I agree that I don't want to see her or Bill anywhere near the White House but I think the Democratic leadership will force his hand as much as they can. Ironically, the longer she stays in the race the less accommodating Obama is likely to be towards her when it comes to handing out positions, be it as VP or in his cabinet (if he is elected). As much as I dislike her, she will help to win over Hispanics and blue-collar voters come November. When you add those 2 groups to the young vote, blacks, women and a split of independent voters, I cannot see how Obama could fail to win.

I don't deny, however, that there is a risk to having her on the ticket (I can't think of anybody who has such a low number of undecideds) and if I were Obama I would certainly look around for other options. One would think that there have to be other experienced candidates with appeal to blue-collar voters and hispanics within the Democratic Party! Any suggestions?

[Underhill]

Originally Posted by Washington

I think that could be said for either candidate. Obama is a brilliant mind but on certain issues he needs to move away from populist tendencies, which have come to characterise Democratic Presidential candidates in recent years, and be a leader. People might not always want to hear bad news but they need to. A candidate such as Obama is popular enough without needed to tailor his polics too much. Hillary, on the other hand, does need to use populism to win votes and this is probably why she supported the gas holiday and he didn't.

As far as the ticket is concerned, I agree that I don't want to see her or Bill anywhere near the White House but I think the Democratic leadership will force his hand as much as they can. Ironically, the longer she stays in the race the less accommodating Obama is likely to be towards her when it comes to handing out positions, be it as VP or in his cabinet (if he is elected). As much as I dislike her, she will help to win over Hispanics and blue-collar voters come November. When you add those 2 groups to the young vote, blacks, women and a split of independent voters, I cannot see how Obama could fail to win.

I don't deny, however, that there is a risk to having her on the ticket (I can't think of anybody who has such a low number of undecideds) and if I were Obama I would certainly look around for other options. One would think that there have to be other experienced candidates with appeal to blue-collar voters and hispanics within the Democratic Party! Any suggestions?

My personal favorite is Edwards (I see him helping in the south) but what about Richardson? New Mexico governor, was a part of the B Clinton administration and hispanics love him.

[Justin]

One would think that there have to be other experienced candidates with appeal to blue-collar voters and hispanics within the Democratic Party! Any suggestions?

I think it'll come down to Bill Richardson or Wesley Clark. Putting a woman on the ticket could be a decent idea to appease the feminists supporting Hillary, but I think Obama's glaring perceived weakness is his lack of foreign policy experience. Clark would complement him nicely, though I think Richardson would Democrats and would be able to tout a decent record on foreign policy.

[Zan de Man]

Originally Posted by Justin

Excellent post, Washington...though I disagree with you regarding Hillary.

I hope you stick around!

Justin took the words right off my fingertips.

[Justin]

You can't prove anything, Zan.

[clownboy]

Morris comes up with some interesting points, but for all that, he's never understood republican voters. McCain has ONE chance with the republican base, you know, that 30-40% of the voters that he MUST get in order to win, despite whatever else he pulls in from the left or the center. He's gotta scare them with SCOTUS appointments. That's the only issue remaining where the base may believe what he says. As it is now, they're staying home, and some, like me are voting Obama.

Clinton would be a terrible VP pick for Obama. He'd lose a small part of his own base and ALL of the crossovers like me.

[Justin]

Morris comes up with some interesting points, but for all that, he's never understood republican voters. McCain has ONE chance with the republican base, you know, that 30-40% of the voters that he MUST get in order to win, despite whatever else he pulls in from the left or the center. He's gotta scare them with SCOTUS appointments. That's the only issue remaining where the base may believe what he says. As it is now, they're staying home, and some, like me are voting Obama.

I'm also thinking a record number of people will vote Libertarian this year.

Regarding the Supreme Court Justices, you're exactly right.

[Washington]

Interesting choice for Libertarian candidate this year. I agree that both candidates will lose voters to the Libertarian party and to Ralph Nader. Obama, however, can get the support of a variety of groups who will be active in helping him campaign. If the south wasn't so racist he could build a 50 state plan (but they are so he can't).

[Justin]

If the south wasn't so racist he could build a 50 state plan (but they are so he can't).

Baloney.

If the Republicans were running a black candidate the south would vote for him (or her). It's not a matter of race for the most part, it's the fact that people in the south generally agree more with McCain than they do Obama.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Justin