Arrogance and elections

Susan Estrich:

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Problem is, there aren’t enough Obama supporters yet to carry the election. It’s the folks in the middle, the folks who haven’t deecided, the folks who need convincing or are inclined not to like him, or are still smarting from the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who will decide this election. Did the foreign trip move them?

In the prayer he left at the Western Wall, Senator Obama asked the Lord to protect him from pride and despair. Maybe he should have added something about protecting his campaign from the related danger of arrogance. It might be the biggest threat to Obama’s success.

“They think they can’t lose,” one of the smartest people I know said to me this week, describing the attitude he sees on display in the Obama campaign. He isn’t the first one to say it.

There was a crop of stories, as the trip was ending, suggesting that the Obama campaign, which used to pride itself on its openess and transparency as compared to the Clinton machine, has now abandoned openess and transparency in favor of tight controls, attacks on reporters who write less-than flattering pieces, and a particularly unattractive form of hardball that people who think they are on the way to the White House, or already there, often adopt. It will not serve him well.

There is no reason for arrogance. Yes, the economy stinks. Yes, people are sick of the war in Iraq. Yes, they think the country is headed in the wrong direction, that the Bush years have cost us dearly, that we need change. The generic Democrat beats the generic Republican. John McCain is old and has, since winning the nomination, run a pretty uninspired campaign. He’s on a tightrope between now and the convention, rightly concerned that he not offend the right in a way that leads to a repeat of the disastrous 1992 Republican Convention, where conservatives were determined to dominate even at the expense of their candidate, and did, to his great detriment.

But even with all this, even with the press cooing, the Republican stumbling, his message muddled and his base shaky, the polls are showing the race neck-and-neck, Obama within the margin of error, behind in the key state of Ohio. And this without even factoring in, or trying to, just how many people are giving the politically correct answer to pollsters, saying they’re for Obama when they aren’t. This is, my solid blue friends, no time for arrogance.

Once he gets past the convention, McCain will run a better campaign....

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I think many of Susan's solid blue friends, some of which are in the media are ignoring Obama's gaffes on the trip. Many have tried to create the impression that McCain has made mistakes, but his slip ups are minor compared to the Obama gaffe on the surge. I think they are missing it because they too oppose the surge. It is clear that John McCain is not going to let that mistake go unnoticed.

Some of this hubris comes from a mistake liberals make about the dissatisfaction with the war. There were many people who were dissatisfied because we were not winning. They should not lump these voters in with those who wanted to lose like MoveOn. McCain can make a compelling case to the voters who were dissatisfied because they wanted to win and did not think we were doing it.