Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

US & Int'l Papers

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A General Election Campaign

Thursday September 18, 2008

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down another 450 points yesterday. Russia's stock market has lost more than half its value since May. In Europe, according to the Wall Street Journal "Outright recessions in Germany and Spain, coupled with stagnation in France and Italy, will bring third-quarter economic growth across the bloc to a standstill."

Housing prices in the US are still sinking, hurricanes have done billions of dollars worth of damage along the Louisiana and Texas coasts, the US government is acting (as The Lad pointed out to me yesterday) more like the government of China bailing out banks, airlines, and automobile manufacturers; and if that weren't enough Actor Ryan O'Neal and his 23-year-old son were arrested yesterday for possession of methamphetamine.

Hello? Ghostbusters?

In the midst of all this, reporters have noticed that the race for President between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain remains essentially tied. The question they are asking is, with the world in as desperate shape as it is, why doesn't Obama have a 15 percentage point lead?

There are a number of answers to this, but I think the main one is: Obama doesn't know how to run a general election campaign.

John McCain essentially wrapped up the GOP nomination after the Florida primary on January 29. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Obama were locked in a death struggle until June. So, for over four months all the attention was focused on the Obama-Clinton race.

Not only that, but because McCain was the Republican nominee presumptive, none of news organizations who pay for these things wanted to spend money on exit polls of Republican voters. So all of the exit polling which was done from February onward was only sampling Democratic primary voters (or Democratic caucus-goers).

Many of our friends in the media grew to believe that the most ardent anti-Republican voters in the nation - Democratic primary voters - were representative of the electorate as a whole.

So, it appears, did the Obama campaign.

Obama is running radio ads and sending direct mail reminding voters that McCain is pro-life and that if he is elected President he will appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who will over-turn Roe v Wade.

This is the kind of tin ear that Obama has demonstrated since he embarked on his post-primary victory lap overseas.

I have said before that everyone in the United States over the age of 12 has made up his or her mind on the abortion question. Everyone.

However, the percentage of voters for whom the Life/Choice is the sole voting criterion is far from a majority. And of those for whom it is the single issue, according to a Gallup study in 2004:

"Thirty percent of pro-lifers say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion. This contrasts with only 11% of pro-choicers who say they will only back candidates of a similar mind on abortion.

So, you would think that if either campaign were likely to run ads pointing out McCain's pro-life position it would be � McCain.

But, because the Obama campaign cannot get out of its head that the electorate as a whole is not represented by Democratic primary voters, they may well be helping McCain turn out his base vote with this ad/mail program.

In that same 2004 study, by the way, 38% of pro-choice voters said they didn't "see abortion as a major issue." If that holds in 2008, then Gov. Sarah Palin's strong pro-life position may be likely to attract a significant percentage of pro-choice women.

Speaking of Governor Palin, I was asked by the AP's senior national reporter Dave Espo why the McCain campaign wasn't giving the press access to her on the campaign trail.

"The campaign is not being run for the benefit of the press," says Rich Galen, a Republican strategist with extensive political experience. "The campaign is being run for the benefit of the campaign, and when everything is going well, then there is no need to change from what has been working."

McCain has not allowed Obama to pull away from him because his operation understands the nature of a general election campaign. That's "what has been working."

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Wall Street Journal piece on the state of the European economy and to the Gallup study of pro-life/pro-choice voters. Also a Mullfoto which made me put down my luggage to get and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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