Why isn't Obama crushing McCain?

A conversation with two prominent journalists and a Bush-Cheney campaign official about why, in what should be a Democratic year, Obama can't put McCain away.

Editor's note: Listen to a podcast of this round table here.

By Thomas Schaller

Read more: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Politics, News, John Kerry, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Salon Conversations, Thomas F. Schaller

Aug. 11, 2008 |

The public is unhappy with the Iraq war. The economy is in dire straits. The president, a two-term Republican, is setting records for unpopularity. It's very difficult for one party to win three presidential elections in a row. Circumstances seem to be conspiring to make 2008 a Democratic year. So why is Barack Obama running neck and neck with John McCain two weeks before the Democratic Convention?

Salon asked two respected journalists and a veteran Republican operative to give us their best guesses. Tom Edsall, who was a Washington Post reporter for 25 years, is political editor of the Huffington Post. He has also been a professor of journalism at Columbia University since 2006. Mark Murray is the deputy political director for NBC News and was previously a reporter for the National Journal. He co-writes MSNBC's First Read, a roundup of national political news. Ben Ginsberg, a lawyer in the Washington firm Patton Boggs, served as counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign in both 2000 and 2004 and played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount.

Tom Schaller: The conventional wisdom from left and right, Republicans and Democrats, is that this is going to be, or should be, a Democratic year. The president is unpopular. People are unhappy about the war. They're nervous about the economy. And yet, at least here in the pre-convention period, we find ourselves with a relatively tight race. Some polls show Obama with a slight, usually single-digit, lead; other polls show him leading within the margin of error or even tied with John McCain. To start the conversation today, do you all agree that in fact, Obama is running behind national party expectations and/or that McCain is running ahead of them? Tom Edsall: I do agree, and he does have some problems he's going to have to deal with. He's got a problem with white working-class voters, including Democrats. Hillary's campaign still lingers on and the effect that she had on appealing specifically to those voters at his expense. He also has -- I've been in Pennsylvania just talking to voters, and there is not really -- a lot of people just don't know who he is or have a real connection to him. So I think he's got a ways to go. Ben Ginsberg: I think Republicans are thrilled with how close the race remains. As you pointed out, the atmospherics in the country are not particularly friendly for Republicans this [election] cycle, and in terms of the way the campaign feels on a daily basis, perhaps exacerbated by the Obama tour of foreign ports of call, it doesn't feel particularly good. But the polls show the race really nip-and-tuck, with McCain in a position to win. I think that the Obama problems are ones that were first very evident among the Democratic primary electorate itself -- that the reservations and doubts that the general population and general electorate seems to feel about Obama were really prevalent in the Democratic primaries, because for any number of weeks, the sort of conventional wisdom was that "Obama's about to put Sen. Clinton away," and it never quite happened like that. So yes, I think Obama is running way behind the Democratic Party brand and McCain is certainly running better than Republicans, largely because he is perceived as more of a maverick than a Bush Republican. Mark Murray: I do agree that Barack Obama has some problems, particularly with white voters. There is an interesting new Democracy Corps Poll, a poll that's put out by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, and it actually showed that Barack Obama versus John Kerry in 2004 is running poorer than Kerry did among many whites, particularly among older whites. So that is a problem for Obama. On the other hand, some of that is offset by Obama doing much better than Kerry did among African-Americans, independents and younger voters, and so some of his weaknesses are offset by some of his strengths. But no doubt, for him to really capitalize in this environment, he's going to need to shore up some of his weaknesses.

However, to be a little counterintuitive, I would actually say that a lot of this also has to do with John McCain. I was looking back at a March NBC-Wall Street Journal poll that had both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton running about 2 or 3 points ahead of John McCain, even though the generic ballot had Democrats winning by 15 points. Against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, John McCain was doing much better than your average Republican, and a lot of that has to do with McCain's appeal with independent voters. And whether or not that holds up from here to November is an interesting question. But certainly, John McCain's maverick brand, his relationship with independents, really has helped him in this type of environment.

So I think it's two things. It's Obama's weaknesses and also some of John McCain's strengths. That said, the latest AP poll had Barack Obama 6 points over McCain, and if Barack Obama wins a 6-point election come November, that would be one of the biggest election margins of victory we've seen in the last few presidential cycles.

Schaller: It's funny, I have heard repeatedly from pundits, and I think that they're right about this, that this election is mostly going to be a referendum on Obama. Mark Shields recently on "The NewsHour" made a comparison to the 1980 race, the argument basically being that the country was unhappy with Jimmy Carter then; the country is unhappy with George Bush now. Even though I think Ben Ginsberg's point that it's not Bush running again and not necessarily an heir apparent in McCain, still the parallel here is people in 1980 were not quite sure about Reagan and it was up to Ronald Reagan to assuage and assure the country. Is that a fair parallel? Does Barack Obama need to pass a minimum threshold, and if so, what is it going to take to do that? Murray: I completely agree that the 1980 comparison is apt. And a lot of the burden is on Barack Obama to make the sale, just as [it was on] Ronald Reagan in 1980. And as we all saw, Reagan was able to make that sale. It wasn't apparent in poll numbers in the summer, but once you got to the fall, and once you ended up getting to the debates, it was clear that Reagan was going to be the big winner.

It's also interesting that another change election was back in 1992 and obviously, Bill Clinton, the challenger, ended up beating the incumbent, George H.W. Bush. What's very interesting about that is that, even in a very big change environment, with 80 percent of Americans saying the country was on the wrong track, had Ross Perot not been in the race, it would have been a much, much closer election. And so, I think you can go one of two ways. Either Barack Obama makes the sale and he wins convincingly like Reagan did in 1980, or he doesn't and we need to fasten our seatbelts for another very close election.

Next page: "It's not something that we see a lot from Obama, indignation and a lot of fire, but if he taps that more, that could actually be a big positive for him"