Joe Biden was the clear winner in most of the post VP debate polls last week. CBS had him winning 46% to 21% amongst uncommitted voters. CNN handed the debate to him by a 51% to 36% margin. Obama is also surging in both the national and the state by state polls, with a remarkable 13% lead in Virginia.
Having said that, if you relied on Conservative Home for yourUS election news, you might be in some kind of parallel USuniverse, where Palin had won the debate and McCain was roaring to victory. The only post debate poll they focused on was a highly suspect focus group by partisan Republican Frank Luntz on that “unfair and unbalanced” network Fox News. And the last time I saw Con Home report on an opinion poll it was during McCain-Palin’s artificial bounce. Hopefully, certain figures in the Party will accept that the special relationship should prosper under a Democrat as well as a Republican President.
Having said that, it is clear that McCain is ready to unleash the dogs of war on the Obama campaign. They have already started hitting Obama for his links to Bill Ayers. The fact that Obama barely knows him and that he was 8 when Ayers had his campaign of domestic terror doesn’t seem to stop the Republican smears. Doubtless Reverend Wright will soon be dragged back into play. The Republican Party are taking LBJ’s dictum that “if you do everything then you will win” to the limits of truth and acceptability. Of course, McCain has to be very careful about this. Obama could quite easily resurrect the scandal of McCain allegedly taking bribes from convicted felon Charles Keating in the 1980s. They could remind voters that this ‘family values’ candidate left his crippled first wife for an heiress worth $100 million on his return from Vietnam. They could point out that this 73 year old has had considerable health problems in the past and that a vote for President McCain is also potentially a vote for the part frightening and part absurd sceptre of President Palin.
Having said that, I’m not convinced that the swift boat and smear tactics of the Republicans will work this time round. It is pretty difficult to “turn the page” on the economy when the Dow is recording record fall after record fall. The economy can not be a secondary issue when people’s number one concern is insecurity about their jobs, their homes and their livelihoods. Last time round, Karl Rove said that if the War on Terror was the number one issue Bush would win. This time round, if the economy is the number one issue then Obama will win. I can not see the economy being anything other than the number one issue come the first Tuesday in November.
Related posts: