Monday, May 12, 2008
He's in a box: If he moves left, he loses the center, but by tacking right, he loses his base. And he can't lie his way out as smoothly as Clinton did.
Aug 17, 2000 | Democrats need to face a hard fact: If the election was held tomorrow, Al Gore would lose in a vote of landslide proportions. The latest Battleground poll, a bipartisan survey released yesterday, shows Gore losing by 9 percentage points. A Los Angeles Times poll, released the same day, showed the same margin of Bush advantage. The bad news is that these polls were both taken after the Joseph Lieberman pick, and after Gore had begun to lock down his base.
The Battleground poll showed Gore winning 87 percent of registered Democrats, an increase in Democratic support of 14 points since the previous poll was taken two weeks ago. But the same poll showed that Bush has established a 17-point lead over Gore among "independents," who are crucial to the outcome of any presidential election.
More bad news lies in the fact that the Battleground poll is a poll of registered rather than likely voters. Motivation is a key Democratic problem this year. Among likely voters, the Los Angeles Times poll showed George W. Bush leading Gore by 12 percentage points in a four-way race. Moreover, stories have only begun to be written exploring the implications of the choice of a "right wing" Democrat to the No. 2 spot, and specifically its ability to depress enthusiasm and turnout among the Democrats' core left-wing constituencies.
There have been more than 200 polls taken since the end of the primaries and Bush has led in every one of them except five. Two of those five were ties, and all of them were taken in March. Since March the race has remained basically static with Bush decisively ahead. Barring a major screw-up by the Republican candidate and his campaign, can Gore change this? In my view he cannot.
Normally, the presidential race is more about character, values and judgment than so-called "issues." For one thing, the issues are complex and can be easily distorted, and the parties tend to move toward the middle, blurring distinctions. Nonetheless, Democrats are waiting for the "issues" stage of the campaign, which is supposedly yet to come. This is a sign of their desperation. This campaign has been dominated by issues questions thus far. The problem for Democrats is that the issues have not worked for them as they expected.
The reason is the way Republicans have conducted their campaigns. By embracing the "concern" issues of Social Security, education and healthcare, and by staging a convention that emphasized the values of compassion and inclusion, the Bush campaign and the Republican Congress have successfully neutralized the Democrats' traditional advantage in these areas and made a direct appeal to independents that will be hard to overcome.
The Republican nominee is an attractive candidate, and has demonstrated, over the course of his campaign, leadership qualities that the electorate has recognized (as registered in innumerable polls). To an electorate weary of scandal, Bush has pledged to "restore dignity and honor to the Oval Office." To an electorate fed up with partisan bickering, he has identified himself as a "uniter, not a divider" who will work with all political factions. His record in Texas, where he won 70 percent of the vote and the endorsement of most Democratic leaders and every statewide Democratic officeholder, is impressive evidence that he means what he says and can deliver on it as well.
By contrast, the Democrats' candidate, Al Gore, has squandered opportunities to show leadership and instead established the image of a man who is prone to the partisan and to the negative, unclear about his own identity, uncomfortable with the truth and a calculating political animal. The only thing Al Gore seems to have done right has been to show boldness in picking Lieberman as his running mate. Unfortunately, from his point of view, this hasn't produced the needed results in the polls, and in the long run may help to undo him.
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