Obama's Polling Numbers

The polls are looking good for Barack Obama. But what do they really mean?

The current polls reflect a mood of confusion and panic among the voters. The nation is facing a crisis, voters were taken by surprise, they don't understand what happened, what will happen next, or what to do. In such a situation, when a voter is asked his or her preference about the upcoming election, "undecided" would be a very lame answer. So it should not be surprising that voters who only two weeks ago were undecided or leaning have declared themselves for one side, at least temporarily.

Nor is it particularly surprising that more should have declared a preference for Obama rather than McCain, since the polls have indicated all along that in 2008 the Democratic brand is preferred to the Republican. And since the particular crisis at hand concerns the economy, the reflex preference is for Obama, the Democrat.

I fail to see that much has happened in the campaigns themselves to move voters from Undecided to either candidate in the past two weeks. Some deflation in the Palin bubble may have contributed. But the main factors appear to have been external to the campaigns and the candidates. In other words, Obama has gotten lucky. But except for early votes, which probably are not cast by undecided voters anyway, none of this luck actually goes on the scoreboard. Obama is running up a lot of yardage. That doesn't always lead to points.

Perhaps a football game is not the most relevant analogy. What about George Bush's approval ratings in the aftermath of 9/11? Very, very high. But they didn't reflect an underlying confidence in his leadership, and they didn't stay high forever. If people didn't care much for Bush on September 10, 2001, and didn't care much for him on September 10, 2003, why did they support him so much on October 11, 2001? Not really anything that he did. But the public was in a state of shock, and "I don't know" wouldn't have been a very responsible attitude.

Obama now is enjoying a temporary rise in preference, but there is no reason to believe that it reflects a fundamental change in the way voters think about him or McCain. As the sense of crisis passes--even if the economic distress becomes regular, and not a new shock a day--voters will again return to thinking about what they will do. When that happens, Obama will have to win their support on the basis of what they know about him rather than their confusion about everything. If Obama can rise to that challenge, he will win the election.

But it will not be easy for him without more luck of the sort that has helped him for the past two weeks. The fundamental weakness of Obama's candidacy is Obama's complete lack of accomplishments. Voters have no reason to trust him to fulfill his promises, because they have no reason to think that he is up to the job. And even if Obama could give them reasons by scowling and talking in a deep voice, his campaign's message is still Hate Bush, Hate McCain, over and over and over again. It isn't a very persuasive message, especially coming from a candidate who also claims that he is a transformative healer.

Moreover, many of the deep weaknesses in Obama's candidacy are only beginning to come out now. In the long run the financial crisis will hurt Obama's reputation a lot. Who ever heard of ACORN before House Democrats tried to channel billions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money into it? But Americans know about ACORN now, and more find out as every day passes, and there's no telling how much there is to know. For a while Obama was bashing McCain for causing the mess through his advocacy of deregulation. But voters who have seen the CSPAN video of the 2004 House hearings on regulating Fannie and Freddie are not going to find that line persuasive at all.

On the contrary, it is now Obama who can and should be put on the defensive about his involvement with ACORN, and what ACORN's methods and goals really are. Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright--these associations, significant and discreditable though they are, are merely symptoms of Obama's ideological commitments and activities. Obama knows as well as anyone that voters will not be pleased to learn what ACORN is, much less how deeply he has been involved in it. That's why Obama and his "Lie Squads" have tried everything to keep it hidden throughout the campaign.

Needless to say, voters won't be learning much about ACORN from the MSM (or Pravda as I sometimes call it). And in the short run the unremitting crowd-noise of the MSM does help Obama. But news travels very fast these days, and more and more people are finding out things that the MSM doesn't want them to know. And they are also finding out that they can't trust the MSM. Ill-gotten gains can backfire. It won't help Obama when people have time to think about how many lies they've heard about him. They'll resent it.

I'm not predicting anything about the election. But I don't think that Obama's star is on an upward course, despite appearances this week. Much trouble is breaking around him. If he survives the election and gets to the White House, the president he'll commune with most at night will be Richard Nixon. That second term must have been rough.