What 7 weeks have done to the Obama campaign

David Brooks:

Here are two things we learned tonight. First, Barack Obama is going to almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. He’s withstood seven weeks of bad news and he still exceeded expectations.

The second thing we learned is that this general election is going to look nothing like the last two. Those elections were base mobilization elections. The candidates did little to upset party orthodoxy or move dramatically toward the center. That won’t work this time.

The extended primary season has changed the profile of Obama supporters. Back in Iowa, he seemed to gather post-partisan and bipartisan support. He was strong among independents. But if you look at the exit polls from tonight and from the recent primaries, one thing leaps out at you: the further left you go, the more support Obama gets. The more centrist a voter is, the less likely he or she is to support him. Once upon a time, Obama had strong support from wide swathes of very religious people. Now he has wide swathes of support among secular voters.

Obama has a much more liberal profile than he did several weeks ago. Moderate, independent voters are now less sure that Obama shares their values. Hillary Clinton voters are much, much more hostile toward him. His supporters look more and more like the McGovern-Dukakis constituency, and the walls between that constituency and the rest of the country are higher than they were weeks ago.

Obama is going to have to work hard to tear down those walls over the coming months. He is going to have to work hard first to win over the Clinton voters, who are more economically populist and socially conservative than his supporters. He is also going to have to work hard to win over suburban independents, who are less economically populist than his current supporters. He’s going to have to break conspicuously with orthodox liberalism to re-establish that values connection with people in Ohio and Missouri.

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Republicans are going to take a look at Obama’s liberal profile and they’re going to be tempted to run a traditional right versus left campaign. They know how to beat Dukakis-McGovern candidates.

That would be a big mistake. Traditional Republicans can beat liberal Democrats when the Republican brand is in healthy shape. That is not the case now....

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The upshot is that McCain will have no choice but to run an untraditional campaign. Anything that smacks of traditional Republican tactics or philosophy will go down in flames.

In 2004, only about 10 percent of the electorate was really undecided. Now about 36 percent is undecided. That’s a lot of votes to play for.

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The fact is that the Democrat brand is not so hot either and with Obama associating himself with the radical wing of the Democrat party there are a lot of voters out there who will reject him because of that association. His Chicago friends will matter, because they reveal the hollowness of his promise of uniting people toward common objectives. If he can't move his friends to the center, he will not be able to move his opponents.