Posted by
BrianW on Friday, September 12, 2008 8:19:07 PM
Is this presidential race truly Senator Barack Obama's to lose? Has
Senator Barack Obama's bid for the Whitehouse truly suffered its greatest loss due
to Sarah Palin's entrance on the scene? Perhaps, but I'm not so sure
that her seemingly powerful, party-uniting charisma tells us the whole
story. Gov. Palin's "entrance" to the scene may not have done that
much to change the popularity of Sen. Barack Obama. While it certainly
has had some effect in bringing Republicans, and apparantly even some
moderates, out of the woodwork and back to paying attention, I'm not so
sure Sen. Obama's popularity didn't simultaneously fall away all on its
own.
Please, let's remember the recent history of the last few months. Sen.
Hillary Clinton was fast gaining ground in the primary campaign, taking
several states away from Obama toward the end. In fact, if the early
caucuses in Michigan and Florida would have been admitted and polled
properly, that is, with everyone's name on the ballot and with
applicable campaigning having been done by all relevant parties,
there's a good chance he wouldn't even be the Democratic nominee. Not
only is the U.S. nearly evenly divided between the right and the left,
but the left was also nearly evenly divided between Sen. Obama and Sen.
Clinton as their choice. In fact, most people expected and predicted
the DNC to earn Sen. Obama's campaign a 10- to 15-point bounce, but
even though the announcement of Gov. Palin wasn't made until the day
after the DNC ended the campaign simply did not see numbers anywhere
near what was expected. It's just too easy to get lost in the emotions
of the moment and make judgments regarding cause and affect, but if we
consider the history of the Democratic primary, including Sen. Obama's
numbers versus Sen. Clinton's and his numbers right through the DNC,
you might just draw a slightly different conclusion. Outside the
pop-culture elites, such as Oprah and Matt Damon, Sen. Obama's
popularity was already fading among the left before Sarah Palin was
ever announced as Sen. McCain's Veep choice.
While the Sarah Palin factor may be piling more dificulty atop of the
already struggling campaign, I can hardly credit that alone for Obama's
current slipping in the polls. Regardless of the cause, I think we can
now more accurately say that this presidential race between McCain and
Obama has suddenly somehow become Sarah Palin's race to lose.