HALF-FULL REPORT 09/07/12

The Democrats and Republicans have held their national conventions.  The most important election since 1980 – perhaps since 1860 – is now just 60 days away.

The polls show a tight race.  In the RealClear Politics average of polls yesterday, it was Obama 46.7, Romney 46.7. "It’s going to remain tight as a tick," White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe predicted yesterday.

The sour mood and the frantic spinning of liberal journalists suggests something different.

Only twice in the age of television has a party’s national convention actually hurt its electoral prospects.

*In 1972, centrists attracted to the Democratic party by FDR, Truman and JFK watched in fascination and horror as the McGovern convention in Miami was thrown wildly off schedule by strange looking people demonstrating for obscure causes.  These clowns couldn’t run a two car funeral, much less the country, they concluded.

*When Pat Buchanan declared "culture war" at the Republican convention in Houston in 1992, swing voters thought this extreme.  They took out their dislike on President George H.W. Bush.

The Democratic convention just concluded in Charlotte – which contained elements of both the McGovern and Buchanan conventions – may be the third.  There was one unforced error after another.

*On Sunday, the host committee sponsored a Moslem prayer fest, led in part by an apologist for terrorists. 

Little harm will come from it, but the Juma was a really stupid thing for Team Obama to permit, because only harm can come from it.  There are only a handful of Moslems in the country, and Zero already is guaranteed most of their votes.  But the celebration of Islam – especially in contrast to the way Jews and Christians were treated later in the convention – could turn off many times their number of swing voters.

*On Monday, the host committee struck again with the release of a video which declared the only thing Americans have in common is the government.  This was so over the top that Team Obama backed away from it.  Was no one at the White House, or at campaign headquarters in Chicago paying attention to what the host committee was doing?

*Tuesday opened with a flap caused by a lie Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla, chair of the Democratic National Committee, had told the night before. "We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel," she told Jewish Democrats Monday.

After the Washington Examiner reported  her remark, Ambassador Oren emphatically denied ever saying any such thing.  So Debbie Dimwit told Fox News the Examiner had deliberately misquoted her.  That was a mistake, because in response, Phil Klein, the Examiner reporter, posted on the Web audio of DD saying exactly what she said she didn’t say.

*The big flap Tuesday was over the Democrat party’s platform.  It mentioned Barack Obama 100 times, but God not at all.  And it removed references from earlier platforms to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  This caused consternation among Jewish groups.

"I know that the only document which has been read by fewer people than the Obamacare bill is any platform ever adopted, but someone – SOMEone has to read the thing and make sure the "Ts" are crossed and the "Is" are dotted," said former Newt Gingrich press secretary Rich Galen.

*On Wednesday, Team Obama announced the president’s acceptance speech would be moved from outdoors at the 74,000-seat Bank of America stadium indoors to the 20,000 -seat Time Warner Cable Center.  The reason, Team Obama said, was because of the weather.  This was transparently false.

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All year Zero has been drawing significantly smaller crowds than in 2008. The mood of those who do come to hear him speak is sullen, and they don’t pay much attention to what he says, wrote Toby Harnden of the London Daily Mail.  The Obama campaign this year is a "joyless slog," Mr. Harnden said  (The Obama campaign was downsizing events on purpose, spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the New York Times. This excuse reminded Mark Steyn of Spinal Tap’s final concert tour.)

So moving the speech was the right thing to do.  But Team Obama should have realized months ago they couldn’t fill the seats at Bank of America stadium, and changed the venue earlier, when it wouldn’t have attracted so much attention, and when they wouldn’t have been caught in yet another ridiculous lie.

*Also on Wednesday, it belatedly occurred to Team Obama that dropping God and Jerusalem from the Democrat party platform might not sit well with Middle America.  (Nearly two thirds of Americans support Israel; more than 90 percent believe in God.)  So they prepared amendments to put God and Jerusalem back in, and rammed them through Chicago-style.

This compounded the original mistake, because it resulted in the spectacle of delegates unhappy with the procedure apparently booing God. The Huffington Post noted:

Embarrassingly, convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, had to ask for three voice votes, and each time the nays got louder. He eventually ruled that there was two-thirds support for the changes, despite the clear lack of such a majority.

It’s hard to top that for incompetence, but Ms. Wasserman-Schultz succeeded. The omissions of God and of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the platform were just a "technical oversight," Debbie DimWit told CNN, and "there wasn’t any discord" in the vote to amend it.  That prompted Anderson Cooper to say she was living in an "alternate universe."

The delegates were booing God, thinks Spengler (David Goldman).

"The cultural divide in the United States is now almost absolute; Democrat Party liberalism, which once embraced devout Catholics and observant Jews, cannot conceal its contempt for religion."

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Because it happened on the same day, the platform fight over God and Jerusalem stepped on some of the coverage of Bill Clinton’s speech, which was unfortunate for Team Obama.  Liberal journalists hailed the speech as a "home run." 

It was very effective, most conservative analysts agreed.  But Charles Hurt of the Washington Times thinks Bubba did himself more good than he did Zero.  Rich Galen has a must read description of how the Big He upstaged the president.

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*On Thursday, Democrats dug the hole they created with the God/Jerusalem flap a little deeper by forming a circular firing squad to apportion blame.

*The belated change of venue for the president’s speech caused disappointment among thousands of Obama supporters who’d been given free tickets for Bank of America stadium, but for whom there was no room in the much smaller Time Warner arena.

*The big event Thursday, of course, was the president’s acceptance speech.  Well, maybe not so big.

"Barack Obama gave a dull and pedestrian speech tonight, with nary an interesting thematic device, policy detail, or even one turn of phrase," said liberal Michael Tomasky.

"He gave one of the emptiest speeches I have ever heard on a national stage," said conservative Charles Krauthammer.  

 "Like an aging rock star, President Obama, in a downsized venue, with downsized proposals and spewing downsized rhetoric only reminded us how far he has fallen from the heady days of 2008," said Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger at the Washington Post.

"Reporters think President Obama’s speech was lame – meandering, and sounding like a State of the Union address," said Politico. "People at the after-parties seemed baffled that he didn’t lift his game for the big moment."

"What I found perplexing about the speech was that Obama chose to return to the same old themes and tropes and motifs – when they have all proved spectacularly ineffective for him," said John Podhoretz in the New York Post.

It was stale and empty," said disillusioned Obamacon Peggy Noonan. "He’s out of juice."

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The average age of speakers at the Democratic National Convention was 59.7, more than 10 years older than the average age of the speakers at the GOP convention the week before.  But most were more obscure.

The Charlotte podium was largely dominated by activists (Sandra Fluke, Lilly Ledbetter), the liberal congressional faithful (Mrs. Pelosi, Harry Reid), and urban mayors from failing states (Los Angeles’s Antonio Villaraigosa, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel), wrote Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal.

When they weren’t bashing Republicans, the speakers in Charlotte talked mostly about abortion (Democrats think even partial birth abortions should be permitted, and that the government should pay for abortions even for wealthy women) and contraception (Democrats think even religious colleges should be made to provide it for free to students, despite their moral objections.) 

These are not the positions most Americans take on these issues, and these are not the issues foremost on American minds. 

At the Republican convention in Tampa, former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, co-chairman of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, urged other disillusioned Democrats to listen carefully to what was said in Charlotte.  He asked:

Do you even recognize the America they are talking about?

Many don’t, apparently.  Mitt Romney led Barack Obama, 46-45, in Rasmussen’s tracking poll today (9/7).  The Reuters-Ipsos tracking poll yesterday had Romney leading, 45-44.

"Barack Obama leaves the Democrat National Convention here with a commanding position in the race for president," wrote Ben Smith of Buzzfeed.

Mr. Smith either is spinning furiously, or is delusional.  Among political pros, there is a technical term for an incumbent president who polls in the mid-40s two months before the election.  That term is "toast."

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Undecideds typically break heavily toward the challenger. This is especially so when times are bad. Try as they might, journalistic spinners can’t spin away the fact that the national debt passed $16 trillion the day the Democratic convention opened, or another bad jobs report the day after it ended.  Mr. Obama’s lackluster acceptance speech is unlikely to shatter this pattern.

Here are some other reasons why Mitt Romney is likely to pull away in the coming weeks:

*Because he must run from his record, not on it, Barack Obama must necessarily try to win through mobilizing his base.  But his base is too small.  There are twice as many self-identified conservatives as there are liberals, according to Gallup’s annual poll.

Add Yellow Dog Democrats who are not liberal to the 21 percent who say they are, and Obama is still 5-8 percentage points short of 50.  And as we saw in Charlotte, the stands the Democrats are taking to fire up the base drives away centrists.

Another problem with a base mobilization strategy for Zero is that the most critical elements of his base – blacks and young people – have had, historically, the lowest propensity to actually show up at the polls.

*Team Obama, the Democrat National Committee, and associated SuperPacs spent about $140 million before Labor Day on television ads, nearly all of them attacking Mitt Romney.  This is a phenomenal sum for this early in the campaign.  It’s more money than either presidential candidate spent in total in 19xx.  But it didn’t move the needle.  The president has declined a little in the polls since this unprecedented advertising blitz began in June.

Because Team Obama has spent so much so early, they don’t have it to spend now when, historically, it has mattered most.  Romney, the Republicans and allied SuperPacs will outspend Team Obama the rest of the way, probably by a lot.

Republicans don’t have journalists spinning on their behalf, as Democrats do.  So their poll numbers tend to rise more once their advertising starts, because that’s the first time many voters will hear their side of the argument. 

*Aside from not having the money now, all the money Team Obama has spent on ads so far has two other negative consequences for Democrats:

First, manufactured issues – such as the attacks on Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital – have a half life.  People rarely are still buzzing in October over what the buzz was in July.  If Democrats are still talking about Mitt Romney’s tax returns six weeks from now, I daresay even the gang at MSNBC will be bored.

Second, many of the attacks on Mitt Romney were lies.  There is a lot of lying in politics, because lies often work.  But you have to lie smart, like Bill Clinton, not stupid, like Debbie DimWit. 

The lies told in the ads attacking Romney mostly are easily demonstrable, hence stupid.  Liberal journalists are loathe to point them out, but Romney surely will in his advertising.  When a politician gets caught out for an obvious lie, his or her credibility suffers across the board.

*While Obama’s crowds are sparse and sullen, the crowds Romney and Ryan are attracting are large and enthusiastic.  This underscores polls which indicate Republicans are significantly more motivated to vote this year than Democrats are. 

For the first time since they started asking the question, more likely voters call themselves Republicans than identify as Democrats, Rasmussen says.  Among registered voters, Democrats lead Republicans just 44-43, Gallup says.

*The contrast between the two conventions indicates there is a big competence gap between Team Romney and Team Obama.  Despite losing a day to Hurricane Isaac, the Republican convention ran smoothly. 

Democrats would have been better off if they’d lost a day or two to a hurricane, or an earthquake, or something.  President Obama is in over his head.  So is the White House staff and his campaign team.

Because Zero and his team are running on empty, our glass this week is far more than half full.