Obama is making a strategic blunder in going on offense instead of playing defense in response to McCain's attacks. The fact is Obama will win this election if he convinces Americans he is a reasonable alternative. Polling suggests Democrats will expand their majorities in the House and Senate. Obama has not only been consistently ahead in the polls, but political indicators suggest he will win a decisive victory.
The Electoral Barometer has predicted the winner of the popular vote in 14 of the 15 presidential elections since World War II. There were five elections in which the Electoral Barometer was negative and the president's party lost the popular vote in all five of these elections: 1952, 1960, 1976, 1980, and 1992. There were ten elections in which the Electoral Barometer was positive, and the president's party won the popular vote in nine of these elections: 1948, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004.
The information required to calculate the final Electoral Barometer score for 2008 will not be available until August when the federal government releases its estimate of real GDP growth during the second quarter of 2008. However, it appears very likely that the Republican Party is dealing with the dreaded "triple whammy" in 2008: an unpopular president, a weak economy, and a second term election. Based on President Bush's net approval rating in the most recent Gallup Poll (-39), the annual growth rate of the economy during the first quarter of 2008 (+0.6 percent), and the fact that the Republican Party has controlled the White House for the past eight years, the current Electoral Barometer reading is a dismal -63.
For McCain to win, and I believe he will, McCain needs to convince Americans that Obama is not a reasonable alternative. It helps that Obama's political strategists are letting these attacks distract them from what they need to do, which is convince voters that in spite of their candidate's inexperience and liberal voting record, Obama is ready to lead. These operatives remember John Kerry failing to respond rapidly to the swift boat ads, and they think their candidate needs to start attacking McCain. Unlike Kerry, however, Obama is not running against an incumbent. He is the default choice in this election, and he is playing into the hands of Republicans when he's wasting his own time trying tie McCain to Bush.
