So, unless there's some major blockbuster of a development that's considerably larger than the emergence of a tape of a seven-year-old radio interview, it looks to me like the current dynamic will remain the dynamic.
The campaigns will head into the final weekend in more or less the shape they're in now, and then they'll make their final push. McCain may pick up a couple points among undecideds, but he's well behind in the electoral college, behind enough that a slight tightening in national polls won't mean the difference between defeat and victory (for him) but will merely effect how many states and electoral votes Obama wins.
Republicans and conservatives must be asking themselves - we're throwing everything against the wall, all the old tried and true stuff that has worked many times before, and yet this time, it isn't sticking. We're calling him a socialist and soft on America's enemies, we're hitting the taxes thing as hard as ever, we're dropping subtle but not too obvious racial hints in certain parts of the country. None of it is really taking. Why?
Of course the economy is the main answer. But I think there's a lot more to it than that. Those attacks have often worked in the past because they persuaded swing voters. In other words, when thinking about questions like this, you always have to divide the country into threes, because there are three main and easily distinguishable groups of voters. Loyal Republicans, who are around 45%. Loyal Democrats, also around 45%. And the 10% in the middle who go either way.
Fear-mongering about liberals worked with a majority of that 10% for a long time. People date it to Nixon, for understandable reasons, but it actually goes back farther. It worked (for a while) for Joe McCarthy. It worked with a majority of that 10% because that 10% used to be loyal Democrats, or their parents were, but times changed and the economy changed and Ronald Reagan won converts for the reasons we know about - in other words, that 10% got tired of Democrats and liberalism.
Bill Clinton won enough of them back to win the White House, but the default position of that 10% has essentially been something like this: I still am wary of the Democrats and big government, so the Republicans get the benefit of the doubt unless a Democrat can prove otherwise.
Today, the Republicans no longer get the benefit of the doubt from this 10%. These people, who were once sick and tired of Democrats and liberalism (or they learned to be from their parents), are now sick and tired of Republicans and conservatism. Bush and the genius Rove saw to that. Their default position has changed. I would not say, and this is an important point, that these people now give the benefit of the doubt to Democrats. I think they now hold both parties in equal disdain.
But from a Democratic/liberal point of view, that's a big improvement. Big enough that these swing voters no longer take Republican attacks on Democrats at face value. And that's why the attacks aren't sticking. They're talking only to their base now.
For these 10% to give Democrats the default benefit of the doubt will require four or eight years of competent and responsible Democratic governance, but again let's not get ahead of ourselves.
