Full throttle, folks

This might be a contrarian take on my Senate-first strategy, but I wholly agree with this. The fact is that going from -8 to -4 in the Presidential race may end up saving more House and Senate seats than squabbling at the margins of a 1-2 point Presidential race. The range of possible outcomes is vaster than it was two weeks ago, and we must fight on the beaches, and in the landing grounds, and in the fields, and in the streets. -Patrick

In recent days, people who are paid to know more about politics than me are openly suggesting we treat the final weeks of this campaign as a salvage operation.  See here and here. 

Now I'm not going to go down the Hugh Hewitt "we got them right where we want em" road. We are facing a tough uphill climb out of a deep hole. But climb we must.

For a number of reasons, we need to look at this race like we are trying to land a crippled A-4 on a pitching carrier deck (Senator McCain might actually have some experience with this).  Now the normal thought would be as soon as one hit the deck , then one would throttle down to slow up the plane and ease the landing.

You don't do that. To land, you need to hope you catch the arrestor wires. If you don't catch the wires, you fly off the end of the deck, and you better have enough airspeed not to stall out and land in the drink.

The analogy here is we have a limited chance of catching the "wires" election day, but we'd best be going full throttle to keep the Republican plane in the air if we don;t land.

Let me set forth the reasons:

a) You can't decouple motivation from the Presidential ticket

Once it becomes clear a presidential campaign has tossed in the towel, the effects are felt down ballot. I recall 1996 vividly here in CT. First Dole shut down his local operations, then it became apparent during this final "where's the outrage" campaign week  he would go down hard , nationally.  The result in CT was one Republican congressman getting beated easily and the once invulnerable Nancy Johnson going into the wee hours before pulling it out against a poorly funded challenger.

Ironically, Bush in '00 lost the state just as badly but because he was perceived as nationally viable we gained a house seat.  

The West Coast in '80 and  '00 are good examples where the early "call" of the election in the east wreaked havoc on candidates of the party which appeared to be losing.

McCain-Palin need to press on hard to the end, and avoid flailing about in the final days ala Bush 1992 or Dole 1996.

b) Where you end is where you start the next time.

Now there are few data points, but let's look at recent presidential elections where there was a change in political party.

1976. The "in party " lost by only 3 points. The party that lost that year regained the Presidency by a 10 point margin in 1980.  

1980 as noted, the "in party" was defeated handily in 1980. It got worse in 1984, as they lost by 18 points and lost again in 1988 by 7 points.

1992 The "in party" lost by 6 points, which was a bit deceiving as they lost nearly  1/3 of their support from 1988, much bleeding to a third candidate. They fell far short of a comeback in 1996, losing by 8.5%

2000 A de facto tie in the popular vote led to the "in party" losing by virtue of Florida's electoral votes going to the "out party" . The new incumbent party enjoyed no major swell of support in 2004 , winning re-election by 3 points while actually trailing in the polls during part of the year.

Based on this track record, a close loss positions a party to turn things around in the next election; a serious loss is to date not capable of being reversed in one cycle.  I presume we would rather suffer through Obama for one term, not two.

That being said, what should the McCain team do? Well, they should try and campaign in states and media markets where there are Republicans in trouble, provided it isn't obviously irrelevant to their Presidential hopes.  If they have a choice between campaigning in an open house seat in Canton, OH, or a heavily Republican area like Lima, they ought to go where the rest of the party benefits.  But sorry Kansas Republicans, no sense sending Palin out campaigning against Nancy Boyda. Doing that quickly sends the "white flag" message nationally. I remain convinced the Michigan bailout was a terrible message to send to the party soldiers.

They also need to campaign strongly against Congressional excesses so they provide a consistent message for the downballot. And they need to start documenting the 2009 Obama agenda in advance, and not be shamed by the MSM into playing pattycake with the Left.

I'm not sanguine about whether Mac gets this plane on the deck on November 4.  But we have absolutely no reason not to be able to "wave off" and start our 2010 and 2012 approach as long as we play this one to win.