My November Prediction

If he does not lose it for himself, John McCain will be the next President of the United States.  That is my prediction.  I see this race as McCain’s to lose, for several reasons:

(1) Obama has the media in his back pocket.  They give him way more coverage than McCain.  They have made this race entirely about him, and they cannot praise him enough.  Furthermore, he just got back from a trip in which he pretended that he actually was the President and was received like a rock star in Europe.  Here’s this young, energetic, fresh, inspiring figure with everything going for him versus an old white man.  And this old white man is a member of the same party as a wildly unpopular President.  By all accounts, Obama should have already run away with this.  And yet, the polls show that he has only a slight lead, which means nothing, especially at this stage in the game.  Obama’s inability to show a commanding lead even with everything going for him shows me that he does not have what it takes to win when the contest really gets going. 

(2) In addition, we should assume that polls will always be skewed in Obama’s favor.  They are normally skewed in favor of liberal Democrats anyway (remember all the projections about Kerry winning in 2004?), but I think they will be even more so this time due to the fact that more people will say they will vote for a black man than actually will vote for a black man.  This is what you might call hypocritical white guilt.  Many white people want to respond to a poll in a way that makes them look like they are racially progressive, but when they get into the privacy of the voting booth, they will not feel the pressure to put on that kind of a front.  Now, if white guilt voters are bad, these people are even worse.  Be that as it may, it still translates into fewer votes for Obama than the polls indicate.  

(3) On the issues, what does Obama have over McCain?  McCain clearly has the advantage on energy and on Iraq.  Obama’s more recent approach to these two issues reminds me of John Kerry.  He’s trying to have everything both ways.  McCain is not my favorite candidate ever, but he is stronger on national security than Obama, his position on the troop surge was right all along (contra Obama, who, unless he has changed his position, still won’t acknowledge that it has worked), and has made domestic oil production and more nuclear power central to his energy policy.  Americans are getting hit in their pocketbooks right now primarily because of the energy policies that the Democrats still defend tenaciously.  If Republicans play this right, they could have a massive victory in November, in spite of the fact that Republicanism as a brand is not popular right now. 

So, I am predicting a McCain victory, and it’s not just because I am a Republican.  A month ago I wouldn’t have made any prediction, but from where I sit now, it looks to me like this is McCain’s race to lose. 

While we’re on this topic, read Jonah Goldberg’s excellent piece on Obama, the postmodern candidate.  Here’s an excerpt:

“The Obama campaign has a postmodern feel to it because more than anything else, it seems to be about itself. Its relationship to reality is almost theoretical. Sure, the campaign has policy proposals, but they are props to advance the narrative of a grand movement existing in order to be a movement galvanized around the singular ideal of movement-ness. Obama’s followers are, to borrow from David Hasselhoff  —  another American hugely popular in Germany  —  hooked on a feeling. “We are the ones we have been waiting for!” Well, of course you are.”