McCain Endures Another Lousy Night At The Polls
With all the attention being paid to the last, divisive throes of the Democratic primary process, there hasn't been much word on how John McCain is doing now that he's earned a little mileage as the official nominee of the Republican party. As it turns out, not very well!
Since the Pennsylvania primary, McCain has consistently left about 25% of the primary vote on the table, ceding large chunks of support to people like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul. Two of those gentlemen have made it pretty clear that they are no longer running for office - in fact, the same two (Romney and Huck, if you don't know already) have explicitly backed the McCain candidacy - yet voters continue to go to the polls to cast votes for McCain's competition, both real and imagined.
McCain's struggles have not escaped the attention of the DNC, and while one can hardly expect them to go out of their way to emphasize McCain's positives, the DNC notes several areas in which McCain's struggles run against precedent:
McCain is underperforming with Republican voters across the board: The Washington Times notes that McCain hasn't managed to capture more than 45% of the Republican primary vote. By comparison, in 2000, George W. Bush managed to pull 62% of all primary voters.
McCain's not benefitting from home cooking: Arizona has thus far offered McCain tepid support, ponying up only 47% of the vote in the state's February 5 primary. One would think that two decades of representation would earn a guy a bit more enthusiasm.
McCain campaign has chronic money problems: Since when does the GOP candidate come off looking like a pauper? A month after McCain earned his party's nomination, he only managed to pull in $15.4 million. The L.A. Times notes, "By comparison, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts raised almost three times that much in the month after helocked up the Democratic nomination four years ago." And in this month's Atlantic, Joshua Green notes that McCain's "small donor base is virtually non-existent."
Persistent and emerging alternatives continue to threaten the McCain brand: Look, it's easy to make fun of the blimp-piloting, gated-community building true believers that back Ron Paul. But once you notice that you've been poking at them for the better part of a year, the time comes to pay them a little mind. Last night's 5% haul out of West Virginia has been one of Ron Paul's worse nights. But recently, Paul grabbed 7% of the vote in North Carolina, 8% in Indiana, and an astonishing 16% in Pennsylvania. What Paul's support lacks in consistence is made up for by its persistence, and sooner or later, McCain's going to have to start looking at this as a sunk cost. Worse for McCain is the emergence of Bob Barr as the Libertarian candidate for president. Barr has solid GOP bona fides, evangelical appeal, and he gives conservatives who don't back Bush on the Iraq war, executive power, and civil liberties a place to hang their hat. And if Barr puts Georgia in play, that's real bad news for McCain.
And ultimately, McCain faces a steep climb as a matter of policy. As a candidate who promises to extend and continue Bush foreign policy and economic policy, McCain's poised to get thwacked but good with the right-track/wrong-track stick. And his recent attempt to get out of the shadows cast by the Bush White House, by staking out a claim on environmental policy, fell flat, earning him contempt from the right and the left, alike.
And now, McCain's looking at Quinnipiac numbers that are nothing to write home about, unless that letter home is a request for rescue or for Paxil. Obama is outpacing McCain to the tune of 47-40. The Quinny numbers reflect an overall "losing ground" trend that McCain's faced in a number of late polls. And that four-zero should worry the McCain camp - it takes McCain to the absolute floor of where his support should be. The next step down is into the cellar.
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First Posted: 05-14-08 01:36 PM | Updated: 05-22-08 05:12 AM