Polls: McCain in the lead - What happened?
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Every single poll is reporting a post Convention bump for John McCain. According to USA Today/Gallup on Monday, John McCain has a lead of 10 points over Barack Obama, among likely voters. According to Gallup Daily Tracking, McCain is leading by 5 points. Accordint to Pollster.com, the electoral votes in play are up to 116 from 99 yesterday at the expense Democrates stronghold down to 243 from 260 while Republican EV staying steady at 179.
Now, Convention bumps are no surprise, but this one seems a little too much. What really happened?
- Need Polarization: Republicans are very aware that a polarized country is their only chance to win. Until August, there was no doubt that John McCain had failed to excite his base. In fact, his favorite VP pick, finally rejected by his own candidate, Joe Libermann would have killed his base support to a very significant degree. What McCain needed was someway to create the animosity between two parties that is normally seen in Presidential Elections. So..
- Bait Media: So John McCain offered a bait to the media - a VP candidate with one of the most conservative record but someone who was relatively unknown. It is not difficult to see that even John McCain would not have agreed to Sarah Palin on the issues. Obviously, “the liberal media” took the bait and started asking all the questions. From the point on, it does not matter if the questions make sense or not as long as McCain campaign can play - “Bad Media is hurting a conservative mother of 5 kids” - game. The more questions were asked, the more convincing it seemed to his base that she is a victim in this game. Did anyone hear about “celebrity” Obama in the meantime?
- Bring Personality: Once people have started focusing on “an innocent conservative mother” being beaten down by bad media and blogs/”diggers” going wild over all the accusation, it was very easy to rally the base. Because, from this point on, the campaign is not about issue, it is about people. It is about a black community organizer against a white POW. It is about a mother of 5 against an age old politician. It isn’t about un-employement rate, nor about Iraq war or healthcare. If you turn on your TV or listen to talk radio, you would know what I mean.
- Change Rules: And now McCain campaign has wiggle room to play by their rules. Such as Sarah Palin giving interview at her own speed and that spread over two days even though she is a likely Presidential candidate if anything happens to John McCain.
Bottom line, anyone who was too happy to take the bait has helped switch the subject from Obama to Palin and the result is this elections won’t be about issues anymore. It would be about people. Which is where the “POW” candidate has his strength. Hence the polls!
