He who dares..?

[shreena]

 The latest move in the American election is quite intriguing, I think.  It's a rather courageous move.  I'm not sure, though, whether it's going to turn out to be courageous in the Humphrey Appleby sense of the word or not.

On balance, I think "well played."  On grounds that, until very recently, the media was all but ignoring McCain entirely. He

Comments

[smhwpf]

A bad move, and I think Obama totally nailed it with his line about a President ought to be able to do two things at once and both of them having big planes to take them from Washington to Mississipi if needs be! A spot poll showed 86% wanted the debate to go ahead.

I don't think McCain's situation was desperate enough to go for something as... well, desperate as that. He picked Palin and briefly pulled ahead on the Really Stupid People vote, then the economic crisis and the wearing off of the Palin effect saw Obama pull ahead - but only by a few points on average (I suspect that 9% one is an outlier). And there's six weeks to go. What's more, recent polls show McCain still holding his own in Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

This was a Hail Mary pass, and you don't go for those unless you're in a lot more hopeless a position than McCain was.

[shreena]

The researcher side of me thought that that spot poll wasn't asking the right question. It seems to me that the relevant question to ask was "Do you admire McCain more or less because of this?" - because I suspect that there are some people who want the debate just because they want to see it but who, nevertheless, have some admiration for McCain's decision.

I'm not sure that we can yet tell whether or not this was a desperate move. I think it's right on the borderline of daring Vs desperate. I think we need to wait and see the polls.

I say this because I never thought that the Bush campaign in 2004 would succeed to win over voters with some of their tactics and yet they did. I don't think we (leftish British people) really ever quite understand the American public.

[kerrypolka]

I'm a leftish American person and I think one of the problems might be that you're trying to conceptualize 'the American public' as a single entity!

[shreena]

I didn't mean that the American public is a single entity. I just meant that I don't think leftish British people understand what the various different segments of the American public care about, think about, want from a president.

I think there's a tendency to think that because the Americans that are in Britain/engage with British people online are quite similar to us, that the election dynamics are going to be similar to ours and they just aren't.