A Consultant's Take

The Lombardo Consulting Group is due to release the latest edition of their election monitor. Here's a preview:

For the last two months we have refrained from commenting on the national and statewide polling on the Presidential race because, quite frankly, nothing was really happening. The fact is that from May to August the race for both major party nominations has been pretty much frozen in place; there's been very little real movement on either side. Other than the intensification of the McCain slide there was no real shift in the underlying political plate tectonics of this campaign. Until this week.

The other major findings are that the Clinton campaign is beginning to resemble the 1999 George W. Bush campaign in its institutional strength; Obama continues to negate the rationale for his candidacy by refusing to attack Clinton; Giuliani's attack on Move On and Clinton was the boldest, most successful political move during September; Michigan may matter more than you may think; and

A just released CBS News survey shows that job approval rating for the Democrat controlled Congress is at 27 percent, which is 6 percent BELOW the President's job approval rating. While people still generally see the Democratic party better able to handle most issues, the perception gap is not as great as it was a year ago. Republicans are still at a structural (more voters say they are Democrat than Republican) and attitudinal disadvantage, but it may not be as big a determinant in the Presidential race as we once thought.

Democrats, like the Republicans before them, are in danger of hubris. Many Democrats assume 2008 is a lock, so it's just a question of winning the party's nomination. The strategy for this is to pander to as many Democratic special interest groups as possible. But you know what happens when you assume . . .