Obama’s team normally looks unflappable but they aren’t this time. The no-drama Obama team of 2008 would have never engaged in so much internal finger pointing over what went wrong. That’s because in 2008, the candidate himself never screwed up badly enough to swing the polls. Everything good or bad that happened to the Obama campaign during that cycle that actually affected the races had to do with what was going on in other campaigns or the country as a whole. Obviously, a strategy of “stop worrying and stay on message” is wise in that situation. When the candidate is the cause of the poll drop for the first time, what happens then? In that situation, the Obama campaign is proving as dramatic as any typical campaign team.
The story that really told me something about how Obama thinks is that John Kerry reportedly went easy on him in debates because he wants to be Secretary of State. That’s incredible if it’s true. Obama would get angry at Kerry, angry enough to not make him Secretary of State, if Kerry beat him in practice debates?
So now we’re going to see how this campaign handles real adversity.
To me at least it seems that if these swing voters can be swayed that easily overnight in one direction, they can just as easily be swayed back the other way.
I doubt that if after an entire summer and September of being bombarded with campaign speeches and media spin they haven’t cemented a position that one debate has done it.
Norah O’Donnell: "Some Democrats say [Obama’s] campaign needs a wake-up call. Bill Plante is here with that part of the story. Bill, you’ve been talking to your sources; what are they saying?
Correspondent Bill Plante: "Well Norah, they're simply upset and really outraged. They blame the President's team, first of all, for not preparing him to meet the challenge of an aggressive Mitt Romney. They say that nobody in the room challenged him, including the guy that he was debating with, John Kerry, because, as they say, he wants to be Secretary of State so he's not going to get in the President's face. And Presidents are used to deference; they're not used to people challenging them like that. So they think that the debate prep was terrible, but they also fault the President himself for not understanding that Romney was going to be more aggressive."
Now of course the reason for Kerry going easy on him can’t be proven, no one’s going to come out and say it directly except pundits. But by contrast, Rob Portman, who is not in line for any particular position in the Romney administration, was simply brutal to Romney in debate prep. Draw your own conclusions.
Brietbart… that’s what I was afraid of. Although I guess Newsmax was also a strong possibility. I see that the original came from a CBS News correspondent - maybe it was on CBS at some point?
Either way, there is zero evidence that anybody in the debate prep room thinks Kerry went easy on him, and less than zero that he did so to get SecState. Even the correspondent is not citing unnamed debate prep folks, or even campaign people, but just “Democratic sources”.
I know it’s silly season, but come on… the blame game is funny, I suppose, but about as meaningful as everybody gunning for the Romney campaign chief a month or so ago.
I believe him too - that his Democratic sources are speculating about why Obama was so flat and are blaming it on Kerry. Just like Al Gore speculated that it was because of the altitude, and somebody blamed it on the Turkey/Syria flare-up. Myself, I just think he had a shitty night. Maybe Kerry did go to easy on him - he didn’t really set the world afire in his debates either.
What I don’t think is very useful is trying to extrapolate that speculation to some sort of leadership flaw in the president (that he responds poorly to being challenged). YMMV.
They may not be talking about the first debate. What worries me is what might happen if Obama botches the next debate too. I really hope he comes out better prepared.
To the person who said the swing state polls still look great for Obama, we’ve got two polls in Michigan showing a tight race and two polls in Pennsylvania showing a tight race.
If Romney is back to competing in Michigan and Pennsylvania, that’s a big change.
What I don’t think is very useful is trying to extrapolate that speculation to some sort of leadership flaw in the president (that he responds poorly to being challenged)
Fair enough. But that’s how it struck me. Maybe Kerry did go easy on him because Kerry’s incapable of being tough. But I remember that while Kerry wasn’t in Bush’s face, he was very good at highlighting how poorly Bush had done and how the country needed new leadership. If he couldn’t do that in debate prep with Obama, a man for whom the case against him is very similar to the case against Bush, then he was probably making a conscious decision to not make that case in debate prep.
That, I think, is the point, like the 18 point swing mentioned above. It just seems too big. Sure, it’s within the realm of possibility. But it just appears SO volatile that it seems wiser to take such results skeptically.
We should be skeptical about whether they will hold up, but we now have five polls showing states are in contention that weren’t last week. It is more likely that the post-convention bounce polls were the ones to be skeptical of.
Most of the recent state polls seem to be from relatively less known pollsters without a track record. I would wait for the more reputable pollsters to come back. IIRC major pollsters are reluctant to poll in the immediate aftermath of a big event like the debate precisely because opinion is so volatile. There is no question that Romney had a couple of massive days on the 5th and 6th and state polls will probably reflect that. The question is whether he has sustained it since then. We will know soon enough.
Yeah, that’s a pretty typical decision by affiliated or even “affiliate” pollsters - wait until you think your candidate got a bounce and then do a bunch of polling. It’s not a coincidence that Gravis, ARG, Mason-Dixon, and Rasmussen have been doing most of the state polling over the last few days.
Not because they are necessarily innacurate, but because they also have a narrative to drive with their results just like PPP and Quinnipiac did a few weeks ago.
Why does your link say “Now the Obama Administration is floating their latest excuse”? Does that mean the “they” Mr. Plante continually refers to is the actual administration? And since “they” also fault the president himself, is that just his weird roundabout way of taking responsibility for his own performance? Or is a shitty blogger posting nonsense about some completely anonymous speculation?
I’d be surprised if anyone at the campaign even looks at the RCP average.
Now, if Silver starts showing Obama losing, panic will ensue.
I’m an Obama supporter, and I admit that the new polls are scaring the hell out of me. But I’ve never put much stock in the RCP average, even when Obama was ahead, so I’m certainly not going to panic now that it shows otherwise.
The RCP average isn’t as scientific as Silver’s system, which more properly weights polls. But I’m curious about whether his nowcast will show a big shift. I don’t know how a nowcast can show Romney with a 25% chance or less of winning when he’s leading in the polls. I don’t know how it could have shown than when Obama was leading by less than a point.