Dewey Caveats

Over the past few weeks, essentially since the excrement hit the fan regarding the economy, we’ve seen evidence that Mr. Obama is going to coast to a landslide in the Presidential election. Certainly many of the political analysis class seem to be talking that way, which is annoying as one would expect the commentators to want a good dog fight (I miss Tim Russert).

No matter what happens at tonight’s debate (unless Mr. Obama starts talking about how he idolizes Josef Stalin) Mr. Obama will likely emerge looking Presidential and the same chattering classes will state that Mr. McCain did not do enough to reverse the tide and we should all look forward to a Democratic administration.

However, there is something that doesn’t quite add up to me. The polls that are showing Mr. Obama with large leads seem overly heavy on Democrats. I know there have been a lot of new Democrats registered, but weighting your samples 39-30 seems heavy to me. Less weighted samples from Zogby and Rasmussen are showing 4-5 point leads which seem more realistic to me. Now, these types of leads would still indicate that Mr. Obama should win, especially given the state-to-state analyses that I looked at a few weeks ago where the Mountain West states would seem to have most of the power.

Yet, I can’t help but think that with three weeks to go, things are being set up too much. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Truman on cassette in the car, but all of this just feels a little too much like the political elite declaring the election for Dewey long before a single vote was cast. Now it should be pointed out that Mr. Truman had the advantage of a good economy during his barnstorming tour and knowledge of the farmer’s mentality, but I cannot recall any other election that people have been so ready to declare over before Election Day.

There are three particular things that have me raising my eyebrows before things get going. The first is that there are investigations (and one possible RICO indictment) against ACORN in fifteen states. Although ACORN is officially non-partisan, it’s no secret that the majority of the people they register tend to vote Democrat and there is documentation that Mr. Obama did hire ACORN in one state to assist with get-out-the-vote efforts. There is nothing wrong with either of these things, but bad press about ACORN could hurt Mr. Obama by association.

Second, the Sixth Circuit court has ordered Ohio’s Secretary of State to verify all same-day registrations and votes in the opening six days of the early voting period by Friday. She has protested that she doesn’t have the resources, but the court has ordered it anyway. Although no one has explicitly stated this, if she fails to comply the court could declare all ballots cast during this period as illegitimate and order them thrown out. Again, the general assumption is that many of these early ballots have been cast for Mr. Obama and losing these could end up tipping the vote total in Ohio to Mr. McCain.

The third is the complete absence of news from Israel regarding worries about Iran. The general talk was that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities between November and January, especially if Mr. Obama wins the election. However, the Iranians are also well aware of this. Israel has always conducted these types of raids (Iraq and Syria) with complete surprise. The one time that NO ONE is expecting Israel to attack is right before the American election. The next new moon would be right at the end of October (Oct. 28) and would provide the perfect cover of darkness in a period that the Iranians are not expecting. This attack could ignite some sort of wider conflict and could bring a military situation to the forefront of people’s minds less than a week before the election. This might benefit Mr. McCain, if it happens.

Now, none of these might mean anything and Mr. Obama wins in a landslide. They all might happen and not matter as Mr. Obama wins anyway (landslide or squeeker). But there are still enough variables in the air (these three being the foremost in my mind), that is not a definite given that Mr. Obama will defeat Mr. McCain. We shall see and I’ll be very curious to see how the numbers twitch around over the next three weeks.