Right up until the very end of the 1980 campaign, when polls still showed Jimmy Carter running even with Ronald Reagan despite high unemployment and inflation and fading national confidence, it was taken as an article of faith among Democrats – and more than a few establishment Republicans – that the country would never turn to a candidate as “extreme” as Reagan. Election Day disabused them of this notion: Reagan won 44 states and his party posted a stunning gain of 12 Senate seats.

The New Deal and Great Society philosophies had become victims of their own success, as the new suburban masses, liberated from the dependence on government that had marked their parents’ lives, revolted against high taxes, big government and the Democratic Party that had come to symbolize them.  read more »

The New York Times' John Harwood makes a decent point today–that candidates with leads the size of Barack Obama's generally don't squander them in the final three weeks of a presidential campaign.

But this principle is even more iron-clad than Harwood seems to realize. He writes:

In the latest Gallup tracking poll, Obama leads Mr. McCain 50 percent to 43 percent among registered voters. Mr. McCain's deficit in that survey has remained seven percentage points or more for most of the last two weeks.

 

Since Gallup began presidential polling in 1936, only one candidate has overcome a deficit that large, and this late, to win the White House: Ronald Reagan, who trailed President Jimmy Carter 47 percent to 39 percent in a survey completed on Oct.

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ST. PAUL--Last night, George W. Bush spoke via satellite to the Republican convention for eight and a half minutes—with his speech timed to finish just before the broadcast networks began their blanket coverage of the ten o'clock prime-time hour.

This doesn't compare favorably with the treatment that the other two-term presidents of the television age received at their final conventions.

For comparison's sake, eight and a half minutes also happens to be the length of the above video, which was merely the introduction for Bill Clinton's speech at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. When the Clinton video finished, delegates and television viewers (his tribute was carried in the ten o'clock hour) watched footage of the outgoing president making his way through a long hallway to the convention stage, while his various accomplishments scrolled across the bottom of the screen (this particular effect was only for those in convention hall, not on TV).  read more »

The prospect of Joe Biden joining Barack Obama’s ticket, which seems to have grown more real in recent days, raises an interesting possibility: another Biden presidential campaign.

Given how his campaign turned out this year, the idea of Biden ever seeking the White House again seems (and probably is) unlikely. But, at least in theory, a tour de force performance as the VP nominee – think Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 – could spark popular interest in a future Biden presidential campaign that was missing in this past one. If Obama were to lose, Biden (again, theoretically) might then have a shot at the 2012 nomination (much the way the ’92 nomination was essentially Bentsen’s for the taking after his ’88 performance).  read more »

The latest wave of polling has been an almost uninterrupted parade of good news for Barack Obama – widening leads in national surveys, solid advantages in most swing states, and startling strength in numerous Republican bastions.

It could all mean nothing, of course. Michael Dukakis led George H. W. Bush by 13 points at this moment in 1988, a margin that would swell to 17 points after the July Democratic convention only to evaporate by Labor Day, never to reappear.

But Obama seems a far more durable candidate than Dukakis, while John McCain leads a Republican Party that is in a state of disrepair unimaginable 20 years ago.  read more »

Obviously, Democrats want voters to be thinking about John McCain’s age and fretting over whether it might be eating away at his mental faculties. There’s no other reason why party’s anti-McCain talking points would call for surrogates to so prominently slip forms of the word “confused” into attacks on the soon-to-be 72-year-old Republican candidate.

In a Wednesday conference call that received much attention, Susan Rice, one of Obama’s national security advisors, talked about McCain’s “disturbing, even disconcerting, pattern of confusing the basic facts and reality that pertain to Iraq,” while John Kerry called his Senate colleague “confused” – a word he repeated several times in an MSNBC interview later in the day. It’s not the first time Democrats have played this card this year, and it surely won’t be the last.  read more »

Think Barack Obama can get away with an ad like this in the fall? 

Tomorrow night marks the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. Members of the press corps (including some Media Mob contributors who are already on their way—note low posting rate today!) will have a chance to clink glasses with the president and his cabinet and remind themselves that despite five years of war, an economy some are already calling a Depression, and a painful slog of an election season, it's all in good fun. L'chaim! To us!

This year's event will be emceed by CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, whom the W.H.C.A.'s president (and ABC News correspondent), Ann Compton, is really excited about: "Craig Ferguson is a fresh take on late night TV. As a new citizen, a first-time uncommitted voter and someone who has looked at American politics from the outside, I am looking forward to his unique take on our system."

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The April 22 Pennsylvania primary breathed new life into an underdog presidential campaign that had been on the ropes, ensuring that the race would continue at least through the Indiana primary in two weeks and raising new concerns within the party about the front-runner’s ability to close the deal.

Yes, this is old news—28 years old, to be exact.  read more »

This year, Republicans have chosen to nominate for president a war hero and longtime senator with one losing White House bid under his belt. In 1996, the party put up a 73-year-old war hero and longtime senator who already had two failed White House campaigns to this name.

On this basis, it has become fashionable to compare John McCain to Bob Dole, the septuagenarian whose listless ’96 effort established the low-water mark for Republicans in the post-Goldwater era—159 electoral votes and 41 percent of the national popular vote.

Reflecting on Mr. McCain’s recent biography-themed campaign swing and a new ad, The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat wrote that the G.O.P. standard-bearer “pushes all my Dole-redux buttons.”  read more »