Only in America.
Four years ago Barack Obama, half-Black and half-Caucasian, was a blip on the political radar screen, an Illinois state senator about whom the only thing known was that he could give a good speech.
In 2004 Obama brought down house when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic Convention that nominated John Kerry for president, and now, 49 months later, the man with the funny name appears to be a solid favorite to become the leader of the free world.
Obama wasn’t given even a puncher’s chance to wrestle the Democratic Party nomination away from Hillary Clinton. Clinton had bided her time in the Senate, had money to burn and millions of women ready to pound the pavement for her. But she based her campaign on experience while Obama was talking change, and with the way things have gone since the turn of the millennium, change sounds pretty good.
The race has fluctuated. Obama opened with a lead over an under-funded John McCain. McCain pulled even in late August and now Obama is back in the saddle. If this election was a football game, Obama would laying seven points to his Republican opponent.
Numbers vary widely and fluctuate almost hourly based on everything from international events to the price of gas. RealClear Politics, which combines all credible polls, has Obama with a 5.6 percent edge among all voters; on the prediction market Intrade.com shares of an Obama candidacy cost 66.7 each while McCain shares can be had for 33.2. Logans.com has an Obama presidency set at 2-7 (-350); McCain is at 9-4 (+225). Some other books have Obama at anywhere from -137 to -200, with McCain now at +150.
“It’s been a roller coast ride so far,” says Michael Perry, oddsmaker for Logans.com. “Right before McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, Obama was a -250 (2/5) favorite. I guess a lot of people thought that Palin would attract a lot of the female vote, because odds on Obama came all the way to -150 as of about a week ago.
“Now the Democrats are gaining more attention from our bettors at least, and now Obama is -350.”
Accuracy in polling has improved, but is hardly perfect. At 8 p.m. on Election Night 2004 Kerry thought he had won Ohio (based on exit polling) and thus the presidency. Three hours later he was conceding to George W. Bush.
Polls did not even exist prior to the 1930s, but by then there was already a thriving betting market for presidential elections in place. With New York City as its epicenter, millions of dollars were wagered on the candidates. From 1894 to 1940 bettors accurately predicted the winning candidate in every election except 1916, when Woodrow Wilson closed fast and won a second term by defeating the betting public’s choice, Charles Evans Hughes. Even at that, betting was almost even on both candidates.
One thing everyone agrees on: candidates who trail say that polls don’t matter.
Enter John McCain.
McCain didn’t seem too concerned about academics as a youth and barely made it out of the Naval Academy. He did earn his spurs by spending five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a fact which he repeats on the campaign trail when questioned about either gay marriage or the economy.
McCain dealing with the economy is roughly the equivalent of a lion tamer going into the cage without a chair - or gun. He has admitted he doesn’t know much about complicated stuff like interest rates or trade deficits, yet curiously insists that the fundamentals of the economy were sound even as the market was tanking last month.
McCain has long had a bizarre relationship with the Republican Party, which has controlled the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, successfully building a three-legged-stool base that consists of:
1. Economic conservatives who are regularly mentioned in Forbes magazine.
2. Internationalist/interventionist conservatives (neocons) who believe that a punch in the nose is the best way to spread democracy.
3. Social conservatives, who are convinced that Adam and Eve were conned by a talking snake about 5,000 years ago.
McCain passed muster with the first two groups, but the social conservatives never trusted him. A strange preacher-turned-governor named Mike Huckabee gave McCain some trouble in the primaries, and suspicions about McCain lingered into August. Then, just prior to the Republican convention the 72-year-old cancer survivor completed an exhaustive nationwide search for the best person to replace him in the event he takes early retirement at Arlington National, and came up with . . . Sarah Palin.
Few in the lower 48 even knew that Alaska was a state, let alone that Palin was its governor. But the more the Hezbollah wing of the Republican Party learned about Palin and her viewpoints on items like anti-abortion and pro-war, the more they liked her.
Any euphoria over Palin among anyone who lives north of South Carolina began to wane, however. She couldn’t name one magazine or newspaper that she reads, she complained about judges without citing a single Supreme Court decision she disagrees with, and informed us all that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government programs when in reality they are private firms.
Cynics will say that Palin is so unqualified for the vice presidency that she was selected only because McCain could not figure out any other way to talk 301 million Americans to get down on their knees every day and pray for his health.
Criticism of Palin was so intense, in fact, that prior to her Vice Presidential debate against Joe Biden there was talk that the GOP would quietly sit down with her and ask her to withdraw, but she avoided complete catastrophe in the debate and Republicans nationwide were talked off ledges.
McCain, meanwhile, has morphed into Yosemite Sam, firing wildly in every direction in attempt to discredit Obama, from comparing the Democrat to Paris Hilton to refusing to even make eye contact during their first debate.
His contention that Obama is an elitist fell a little flat when it was revealed that McCain and his trophy wife own seven homes and at least that many cars.
So is McCain drawing dead, or can he turn things around and score an implausible victory in what is the most toxic year for a Republican candidate since 1976 (post-Watergate)?
There is plenty of calendar left for an October surprise. Kerry insists to this day that a video released by Osama bin Laden cost him the election in 2004. Henry Kissinger had his fingers crossed behind his back when he told a Vietnam-weary America that peace was at hand.
And not talked about much is the Bradley effect, which refers to a discrepancy between polls and actual voting results when a black candidate runs against a white. Tom Bradley was heavily favored in the race for governor of California in 1982, but lost because the theory goes some white voters when polled would not reveal their true feelings.
Is the Bradley effect in effect now?
While McCain swings for the fences, Obama seems content to stay above the fray, ragging the puck and exhibiting the very coolness that Republicans and even some in his own party criticize him for.
Obama can afford a Cheshire cat smile. He gazes at an increasingly favorable electoral map that forces McCain, who has no campaign apparatus in dozens of states and recently pulled up stakes in Michigan, to virtually run the red-state table, taking every state that Bush won four years ago in hopes of piecing together a narrow victory.
It’s a daunting task for McCain . . . if the numbers are to be believed.